EssayCritic

Keywords

Collaborative essay writing, English as second language, classroom study, semantic web, latent semantic analysis (LSA), critiquing system architecture, design theory (reflection-in-action), communication theory (common ground, inter-subjectivity)

Overview

This is ongoing collaboration between InterMedia and Hong Kong Baptist University to develop and evaluate an English essay writing critiquing system. Essay writing is characterized as a design activity, involving composition and organization of themes. This is supported by a critic-based design environment that use latent semantic analysis (LSA) to compute feedback on student essays based on how much of an assigned topic they have completed. LSA is a mathematical technique for comparing two segments of texts, one input by students and the other collected and stored by domain experts (teachers).

Aims

To develop and evaluate the first version of an LSA-based essay critic system and to create the requirements for the next generation of collaborative essay writing support that takes empirical findings, theories of design and communication, and the technological possibilities of a semantic web as the basis for design

Methods

Programming (system, LSA integration, multiple user interfaces), algorithm refinement (LSA), quantitative (questionnaire) and qualitative (observation, video analysis, interview) empirical methods 

Partners

Hong Kong Baptist University (CS department and English dept.) and InterMedia, UiO 

Period of Duration

2004 -

Outcomes

A running system with a web interface (student and teacher modes) that have incrementally been improved in speed (feedback turnaround time) and accuracy (essay theme detection). The system has been employed in different classroom settings (individual and collaborative learning), in effect taking the unique teaching practices in Hong Kong and Norway into account.

Related projects

There are many projects of this kind around (often aimed at product development), especially in the USA. At UiO the project is probably closest to the English Wiki and the special needs for language projects.

Funding

Småforsk midler 2007