Automated writing evaluation systems can improve students' writing insofar as students attend to the feedback provided and revise their essay drafts in ways aligned with such feedback. Existing research on revision of argumentative writing in such systems, however, has focused on the types of revisions students make (e.g., surface vs. content)…

Writing a good essay typically involves students revising an initial paper draft after receiving feedback. We present eRevise, a web-based writing and revising environment that uses natural language processing features generated for rubric-based essay scoring to trigger formative feedback messages regarding students' use of evidence in…

We investigate how technologies that automatically score student written essays and assign individualized guidance can support student writing and revision in science. We used the automated scoring tools to assign guidance for student written essays in an online science unit, and studied how students revised their essays based on the guidance and…

This study compares two designs of automated guidance for short essays in an online thermodynamics unit. Students are prompted by automated guidance to either "revisit" evidence in a dynamic model prior or to plan "writing" changes prior to revision. In this paper we specifically examine how receiving either type of guidance…

While automated guidance in online units has been found to successfully support learning, students can sometimes feel alienated rather than motivated due to computerized guidance seeming impersonal. In this study, we explore ways to improve learning and motivation by personalizing adaptive guidance. Standard adaptive guidance is compared to more…

We introduce an educational game-based assessment that measures the choices students make while learning. We present Posterlet, a game designed to assess students' choices to seek negative feedback and to revise, in which students learn graphical design principles while creating posters. We validate our game-based assessment approach with three…

Much of modern biology has become increasingly chemical in character. Not surprisingly, students often have trouble understanding key ideas in biology because they lack foundational chemistry ideas. AAAS and BSCS are collaborating to develop and study a curriculum unit that supports students' ability to explain a variety of biological processes…