Diane Litman and LRDC collaborators were awarded an NSF grant

Writing is foundational to learning in multiple disciplines. Yet, students struggle to incorporate source material and write argumentative essays, while teachers often struggle to provide content-based feedback.

One solution is to employ technologies like natural language processing (NLP), a component of artificial intelligence that can understand human language — but most of these tools have fallen short.

LRDC researchers Diane Litman, a professor in the Department of Computer Science, and School of Education collaborators Richard Correnti, an associate professor, and Lindsay Clare Matsumura, a professor, have been awarded a $680,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to address the limitations of existing educational technologies for writing.

Their project, “Development of Natural Language Processing Techniques to Improve Students' Revision of Evidence Use in Argument Writing,” will develop a system that leverages NLP to provide students with formative feedback on the quality of their revisions. Their aim is to design a system that will improve students’ implementation of the feedback on text-based argument writing, leading to more successful revision and ultimately better writing. An additional goal is to build students’ and teachers’ knowledge of effective use of source texts.