On-line Grading of Student Essays: PEG goes on the World Wide Web

Automated Writing Assessment in the Classroom

“…Automated writing evaluation emerged in the 1960s with Page Essay Grade (PEG), a program that used multiple regression analysis of measurable features of text, such as essay length and average sentence length, to build a scoring model based on a corpus of essays previously graded by hand (Shermis, Mzumara, Olson, & Harrington, 2001). AWE software remained of interest to small groups of specialists until the 1990s, when an increased global emphasis on writing instruction, advances in AI, and more widespread availability of computers and the Internet all combined to create greater developmental and marketing possibilities (for more in-depth histories and overviews of AWE, see Ericsson & Haswell, 2006;Shermis & Burstein, 2003;Warschauer & Ware, 2006).…”

Remote electronic examinations: student experiences

“…Much less has been reported about techniques for invigilated examinations despite the extensive reliance on them for summative assessment (O'Hare, 2001), although moves are being made to use software in public examinations (Long, 2000). However, there are many issues that need investigation including student anxiety (Carswell, Thomas et al, 2000;McKenna, 2001), automatic grading of free form answers (Burstein, Leacock et al, 2001;Shermis, Mzumara et al, 2001) and the reuse of questions (Bull and McKenna, 2000).…”

“…With the growth in numbers of candidates to be examined, the prospect of grading examinations automatically promises faster, cheaper and more consistent grading (Shermis, Mzumara et al, 2001). Even if automatic marking is not used, capturing candidates' answers electronically has potential benefits in legibility and comprehension for graders.…”

Table of Contents

“…Essays or portfolios with prior ratings by faculty are submitted to allow calibration of the software. Empirical evidence suggests that computer automated scoring is very similar to scoring by human raters (Burstein and others, 1998;Shermis, Mzumara, Olson, and Harrington, 2001). These systems offer great labor savings, but the automated ratings do not supply the individualized narrative feedback so crucial to students seeking to improve their writing.…”