The software focuses on content rather than writing ability, but ''it turns out the two are highly correlated. Students who know content write well,'' says University of Colorado, Boulder, psychology professor Thomas Landauer, who has been working on the project for 10 years. The idea is that ''a good essay is an essay that is similar to other essays that have been good,'' says researcher Peter Foltz, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Then the teacher submits a model essay written by an expert or a sampling of essays that have been graded by a human. That provides the software with a basis for comparison.
Researchers say the program examines about a dozen predictors of essay quality.
For instance, an essay that lists words relevant to the topic but doesn't use complete sentences would be flagged. So would an essay found to have sentence patterns too similar to those in the textbook. The software also provides feedback on what the essay left out, a feature that could help students writing term papers. ''We haven't dared'' use the software for creative writing, Landauer is quick to note. But he hopes the software will prompt teachers to use more essay tests, which he says ''encourage a better kind of learning than . And because the software's methodology is consistent and efficient, he says it could lighten the load for educators, especially those with 300 to 400 students a semester.