This article sets out to explore a shift in the sources of evidence-of-learning in the era of networked computing. One of the key features of recent developments has been popularly characterized as "big data". We begin by examining, in general terms, the frame of reference of contemporary debates on machine intelligence and the role of…

We implemented two different approaches of using peer review to support undergraduate essay assignments for students taking large second-year courses in life sciences and biology: a web-based online peer review (OPR) approach and a more traditional face-to-face peer review (FPR) approach that was conducted in tutorial settings. The essays…

Automatic Essay Assessor (AEA) is a system that utilizes information retrieval techniques such as Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (PLSA), and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) for automatic essay grading. The system uses learning materials and relatively few teacher-graded essays for calibrating the scoring…

Essays are an important measure of complex learning, but pronouns can confound an author's intended meaning for both readers and text analysis software. This descriptive investigation considers the effect of pronouns on a computer-based text analysis approach, "ALA-Reader," which uses students' essays as the data source for deriving individual and…

Computer-assisted assessment offers many benefits over traditional paper methods. However, in transferring from one medium to another, it is crucial to ascertain the extent to which the new medium may alter the nature of traditional assessment practice or affect marking reliability. Whilst there is a substantial body of research comparing marking…

Fourth graders with learning disabilities in transcription (handwriting and spelling), LD-TD, and without LD-TD (non-LD), were compared on three writing tasks (letters, sentences, and essays), which differed by level of language, when writing by pen and by keyboard. The two groups did not differ significantly in Verbal IQ but did in handwriting,…

Automated essay grading or scoring systems are no more a myth, but they are a reality. As of today, the human written (not hand written) essays are corrected not only by examiners/teachers but also by machines. The TOEFL exam is one of the best examples of this application. The students' essays are evaluated both by human and web based automated…

This paper reports a comparison of human and computer marking of approximately 600 essays produced by 11-year-olds in the UK. Each essay script was scored by three human markers. Scripts were also scored by the "e-rater" program. There was a good agreement between human and machine marking. Scripts with highly discrepant scores were…

A new computer-based molecular visualization tool has been developed for teaching, and learning, molecular structure. This java-based jmol Amalgamated Molecular Visualization Learning Environment (jAMVLE) is platform-independent, integrated, and interactive. It has an overall graphical user interface that is intuitive and easy to use. The…

This article deals with the place of learner corpora, i.e. corpora containing authentic language data produced by learners of a foreign/second language, in English for academic purposes (EAP) pedagogy and sets out to demonstrate that they have a valuable contribution to make to the field. Following an initial brief introduction to corpus-based…