EssayCritic
Keywords
Student essay critiquing system, English as second language, cooperative writing, classroom study, semantic web application, latent semantic analysis (LSA), critiquing system, design theory (reflection-in-action), communication theory (common ground, inter-subjectivity), sociocultural approach (active mediation)
Overview
This ongoing collaboration between InterMedia and Hong Kong Baptist University has the aim to develop and evaluate a student essay critiquing system for English as a second language. Essay writing is characterized as a design activity, involving composition and organization of essay themes (i.e. topics the essay is about).This is supported by a critic-based design environment that uses latent semantic techniques (LSA) to analyze student essays and compute feedback based on how much of an assigned topic they have completed. LSA is a mathematical technique for comparing two segments of texts at the content (word meaning) level, one input by students and the other collected and stored by domain experts (teachers) as exemplars (model texts).
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 (domain-orinted and conceptual awareness) as the basis for design
Methods
Programming (system, LSA integration, multiple user interfaces), algorithm refinement (LSA), quantitative (questionnaire) and qualitative (participatory 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/adm interfaces) that have incrementally improved in speed (feedback turnaround time) and accuracy (essay theme detection) over time since the project started. The system has been employed in different classroom settings (individual and cooperative use), in effect taking the unique teaching practices in Hong Kong and Norway into account.
Publications
- Cheung, W.K., Mørch, A.I., Wong, K.C., Lee, C., Liu, J., Lam, M.H. (2007). Grounding Collaborative Learning in Semantics-based Critiquing. Int'l J. Distance Education Technologies, 5(2), pp. 40-55. (PDF
)
- Kelvin C.K.Wong, Fion S.L. Lee, Cynthia F.K. Lee, William K.W. Cheung, Anders I. Mørch and Jiming Liu.(2007). A Pilot Study on the Impact of the Web-based Essay Critiquing System on Writing at the Tertiary Level. Proceedings of the 2007 International Joint Conference on e-Commerce, e-Administration, e-Society, and e-Education, Hong Kong, 2007. (PDF).
Masters theses and reports
- Otnes, J.A. (2008). EssayCritic: A Pilot Study of a Computer Supported Essay Critiquing System. Master's thesis, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, 02/08. (PDF)
Presentations
Presentation given by Anders at the University of Hong Kong, Nov. 12th, 2007 (PDF)
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, 2008
