eRevise+RF: A Writing Evaluation System for Assessing Student Essay Revisions and Providing Formative Feedback
Abstract: The ability to revise essays in response to feedback is important for students' writing success. An automated writing evaluation (AWE) system that supports students in revising their essays is thus essential. We present eRevise+RF, an enhanced AWE system for assessing student essay revisions (e.g., changes made to an essay to improve its quality in response to essay feedback) and providing revision feedback. We deployed the eRevise+RF system in 12 classrooms across 3 schools in Pennsylvania and Louisiana. The results confirmed its effectiveness in (1) assessing student essays in terms of evidence usage, (2) extracting evidence and reasoning revisions across essays, and (3) determining revision success in responding to feedback. The evaluation also suggested eRevise+RF is a helpful system for young students to improve their argumentative writing skills through revision and formative feedback.
Our project studies the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to score students' argument writing and provide automated feedback to students to strengthen their essays. We have recently expanded our project to focus on automated assessment of students' revision efforts with feedback to develop their revision skills. Our work has been funded by the National Science Foundations, the Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences, and the Learning Research & Development Center at University of Pittsburgh. A summary of some of our research contributions is provided in the research brief published by the RAND Corporation. Further detail about our research is located in the Publications section on our project homepage.
eRevise+RF system has been launched here https://erevise.lrdc.pitt.edu/. We provide a recorded demo video and poster to illustrate the system usage. Please note the system is not open for registration at the moment due to IRB constraints at University of Pittsburgh to protect young student's privacy. Please contact the author at zhexiong [at] cs.pitt.edu to request a user account.