Using Sentence Compression to Develop Visual Analytics for Student Responses to Short Answer Questions

In this paper, we report on early research to visualize and summarize student responses to short answer questions. Recently published, graph-based multi-sentence compression algorithms have been successfully applied to summarize opinions – a domain area with many similarities to short answer responses. Initial investigations reveal that visual analytics for short answer questions can be derived from the output of graph-based multisentence compression algorithms. A proposed open source short answer analytics tool is also briefly discussed, along with an evaluation plan. The proposed analytics tool will allow lecturers and tutors to have a high level overview of how students have responded to questions, identify knowledge gaps and provide feedback to students.