eRevise+RF: A Writing Evaluation System for Assessing Student Essay Revisions and Providing Formative Feedback
This system addresses the need for automated support in improving argumentative writing skills for young students, representing an incremental advancement in educational technology.
The researchers tackled the problem of automated writing evaluation by developing eRevise+RF, a system that assesses student essay revisions and provides formative feedback, with deployment involving 6 teachers and 406 students across 3 schools confirming its effectiveness in evaluating evidence usage, extracting revisions, and determining revision success.
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 system with 6 teachers and 406 students 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.