Cover: Building a Validity Argument for an Automated Writing Evaluation System (eRevise) as a Formative Assessment

Building a Validity Argument for an Automated Writing Evaluation System (eRevise) as a Formative Assessment

Published in: Computers and Education Open (2022). doi: 10.1016/j.caeo.2022.100084

Posted on RAND.org on May 04, 2022

by Richard Correnti, Lindsay Clare Matsumura, Elaine Lin Wang, Diane Litman, Haoran Zhang

  • To be useful for formative assessment purposes, the information derived from an automated writing evaluation (AWE) system must capture meaningful features of a writing construct.
  • We present a validity argument for an AWE system—termed eRevise—that targets elementary students' text-based argumentative writing skills, specifically their ability to use text evidence.
  • We provide evidence that the feedback is understood by students and that their revisions are aligned with the automated feedback they received.
  • Teachers overall responded very positively to eRevise, with nearly all reporting that they would use eRevise again.
  • Improvement scores were higher when teachers reported substantive interactions with students about the students' interpretation of the automated feedback.
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