Experimenting with latent semantic analysis and latent dirichlet allocation on automated essay grading

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

24 Scopus citations

Abstract

The demand of scoring natural language responses has created a need for new computational tools that can be applied to automatically grade student essays. Systems for automatic essay assessment have been commercially available since 1990's. However, the progress in the field was obstructed by a lack of qualitative information regarding the effectiveness of such systems. Most of the research in automatic essay grading has been associated with English writing due to its widespread use and the availability of more learner collection and language processing software for the language. In addition, there is large number of commercial software for grading programming assignments automatically. In this work, we investigate document semantic similarity based on Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and on Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). We use an open-source Python software, Gensim, to develop and implement an essay grading system able to compare an essay to an answer-key and assign to it a grade based on semantic similarity between the two. We test our tool on variable-size essays and conduct experimental tests to compare the results obtained from human grader (professor) and those obtained from the automatic grading system. Results show high correlation between the professor grades and the grades assigned by both modeling techniques. However, LSA-based modeling showed more promising results than the LDA-based method.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2020 7th International Conference on Social Network Analysis, Management and Security, SNAMS 2020
EditorsChristian Guetl, Imad Saleh, Paolo Caravolo, Yaser Jararweh, Elhadj Benkhelifa
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
ISBN (Electronic)9780738111803
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 14 2020
Event7th International Conference on Social Network Analysis, Management and Security, SNAMS 2020 - Virtual, Paris, France
Duration: Dec 14 2020Dec 16 2020

Publication series

Name2020 7th International Conference on Social Network Analysis, Management and Security, SNAMS 2020

Conference

Conference7th International Conference on Social Network Analysis, Management and Security, SNAMS 2020
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityVirtual, Paris
Period12/14/2012/16/20

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Information Systems and Management
  • Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality
  • Law
  • Communication

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