Towards robust computerised marking of free-text responses

This paper describes and exemplifies an application of AutoMark, a software system developed in pursuit of robust computerised marking of free-text answers to open-ended questions. AutoMark employs the techniques of Information Extraction to provide computerised marking of short free-text responses. The system incorporates a number of processing modules specifically aimed at providing robust marking in the face of errors in spelling, typing, syntax, and semantics. AutoMark looks for specific content within free-text answers, the content being specified in the form of a number of mark scheme templates. Each template represents one form of a valid (or a specifically invalid) answer. Student answers are first parsed, and then intelligently matched against each mark scheme template, and a mark for each answer is computed. The representation of the templates is such that they can be robustly mapped to multiple variations in the input text. The current paper describes AutoMark for the first time, and presents the results of a brief quantitative and qualitative study of the performance of the system in marking a range of free-text responses in one of the most demanding domains: statutory national curriculum assessment of science for pupils at age 11. This particular domain has been chosen to help identify the strengths and weaknesses of the current system in marking responses where errors in spelling, syntax, and semantics are at their most frequent. Four items of varying degrees of open-endedness were selected from the 1999 tests. These items are drawn from the real-world of so-called ‘high stakes’ testing experienced by cohorts of over half a million pupils in England each year since 1995 at ages 11 and 14. A quantitative and qualitative study of the performance of the system is provided, together with a discussion of the potential for further development in reducing these errors. The aim of this exploration is to reveal some of the issues which need to be addressed if computerised marking is to play any kind of reliable role in the future development of such test regimes.