Leveraging C-Rater's Automated Scoring Capability for Providing Instructional Feedback for Short Constructed Responses

Due to some progress on the natural language processing (NLP) front, researchers are able to pursue the problem of automatic content assessment for free text responses with some success. In particular, a concept-based scoring method implemented in c-rater, Educational Testing Service's (ETS) technology for content scoring of short free-text answers makes c-rater capable of giving instantaneous formative individualized feedback without going fully into a dialog-based system nor restricting itself to just canned hints and corrective prompts.