Automated Partial Credit Grading Project
Funded by:
The Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T), formerly the University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR), Department of Computer Science (CS) team of students Chelsea Sanders, Kathleen Venhaus, Tiffany Werckmann and Associate Professors Dr. Daniel Tauritz and Dr. Matt Insall have been awarded a CREU grant for the 2011-2012 academic year. This grant is sponsored by the Computing Research Association Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) in conjunction with the Coalition to Diversify Computing. This project is funded by the National Science Foundation. The topic of the proposal is Automated Partial Credit Grading: Demonstration Project.
Project Summary
In the 21st century, American education is quickly moving away from the traditional classroom lecture structure. Computer savvy students of the new generation are accustomed to working at their own pace and desire continuous feedback. Few institutions,
if any, have the resources to offer around-the-clock human graders to provide such a level of feedback frequency. The recent economic downturn has actually reduced the number of grader hours while class sizes have increased, overwhelming instructors who
then actually provide less feedback overall. Educational companies have responded by significantly expanding the automated training and test tools that they offer. However, these tools are very rudimentary, providing full credit for exact or near-exact
matches to model answers and no credit for any other answer. There is, therefore, a clear and urgent need for a far more sophisticated system which can analyze student solution processes, assign partial credit, and provide detailed feedback to the student
and the instructor on where and how mistakes were made. The Automated Partial Credit Grader (APCG) project specifically addresses this problem through the creation of such a sophisticated system. Currently, the project is in the demonstration phase,
extending the existing proof of concept APCG system into a demonstration grade system and assessing its performance in the classroom.
Dr. Daniel Tauritz
Advisor
Dr. Matt Insall
Advisor
Chelsea Sanders
Grading Engine Software Developer
Kathleen Venhaus
Cyberinfrastructure Software Developer
Tiffany Werckmann
User Interface Software Developer