Computer-Assisted Scoring of Short Responses: The Efficiency of a Clustering-Based Approach in a Real-Life Task

We present an extrinsic evaluation of a clustering-based approach to computer-assisted scoring of short constructed response items, as encountered in educational assessment. Due to their open-ended nature, constructed response items need to be graded by human readers, which makes the overall testing process costly and time-consuming. In this paper we investigate the prospects for streamlining the grading task by grouping similar responses for scoring. The efficiency of scoring clustered responses is compared both with the traditional mode of grading individual test-takers’ sheets and with by-item scoring of non-clustered responses. Evaluation of the three grading modes is carried out during real-life language proficiency tests of German as a Foreign Language. We show that a system based on basic clustering techniques and shallow features yields a promising trend of reducing grading time and performs as well as a system displaying test-taker sheets for scoring.