Despite a painful familiarity with filling out Scantron forms, I’ve never seen the machine they were fed into. This video shows how they work, how the answers were programmed, and dives into its internals.
If you just want to see the guts of it, skip to about 14:30
If you don’t want to watch the video, there’s a roller at the input side that feeds papers through the inspection and comparison chamber. At the start of a grading session, the answer key is fed in and photographically scanned. Student papers go in next and a very small person living inside the machine checks each line to see if they match what was on the key. Once this comparison is complete, they neatly write out the score in percentage or fraction form (depending on the marks in the key’s configuration section) before depositing the student’s page in the output tray.
This is ethical because the very small person likes this. They feel safe, and also like a productive member of society
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