A Study on the Implementation of Automated Writing Evaluation

Abstract

The body of research demonstrating the significance of automated writing evaluation (AWE) systems in writing instruction and education continues to expand. However, not much research has been done to investigate how AWE may be implemented in different educational settings and what kind of effects it has on the students' ability to write. This article describes the MI Write AWE system and the conclusions of an inquiry that looked at the incorporation and use of AWE with middle school writing teaching utilizing a variety of research methodologies. During this investigation, AWE integration was investigated concerning a conventional process approach to writing education and a strategy teaching method based on the paradigm of self-regulated strategy development. Both of these pedagogical tenets were considered about one another. Both the effectiveness of these two instructional settings in fostering students' and teachers' experiences with and perspectives on teaching and learning through the use of AWE, as well as the effectiveness of these instructional settings in encouraging students to improve the quality of their writing from their first draft through subsequent essays, were both evaluated. The results of these evaluations can be found in the table below. Following an eight-week intervention, multilevel model analyses showed that students' first-draft writing skills increased at approximately the same rates independent of the instructional setting. This improvement occurred across the duration of the intervention. The findings of qualitative analyses of interview data demonstrated that AWE's effects on teaching were consistent across various contexts. Both instructional environments featured qualities consistent with a framework for purposeful practice, and this was especially true when it came to the application of AWE.