ETS adds 90 new topics to online service that scores college students’ essays - 19/10/2006

Colleges and universities now have 90 additional topics to choose from when assigning essays through the ETS’ Criterion^SM Online Writing Evaluation service. The new topics are part of the Criterion v6.2 product upgrade and more than double the number of topics available to college faculty.

The Criterion service is an online writing practice and remediation tool that uses automated scoring technologies to evaluate student essays online. It is ideally suited for use in campus writing labs and remedial writing courses, first- and second-year writing courses, and with any writing assignment required across the curriculum. More than 40,000 students at two- and four-year institutions have used the Criterion service.

The Criterion service helps instructors evaluate student writing skills more quickly by scoring essays that students submit and providing annotated diagnostic feedback in real time about the use of grammar, usage, mechanics, style, and organisation and development. After the Criterion service reviews a submission, faculty can add comments and offer feedback through pop-up notes or a private message board.

Faculty can choose from a library of persuasive, expository, descriptive and narrative essay topics or create their own topics. Of the 90 new topics, 40 present business scenarios to especially appeal to instructors of business-related courses.

“Writing proficiency is a critical life skill, and higher education institutions invest significant time and resources to help each student improve that skill,” says Donna Hollenbach, ETS’s Criterion Product Manager. “Students become proficient writers through constant practice, but college instructors have little time to thoroughly review and score each writing assignment. The Criterion service gives students the opportunity to work independently in a computer lab or at home to improve their writing. It also reduces the amount of time that an instructor needs to spend reviewing each essay and gives them the information they need to determine which students are improving, and which need more practice or targeted remediation.”

Faculty and administrators can make the Criterion service available to students in two ways: they can make an institutional purchase for student subscriptions, or they can specify that students purchase a semester-long subscription through the campus bookstore as part of a course requirement. Campus bookstores can place orders with ETS for Criterion subscriptions using the same process by which they supply textbooks and other course materials.

Watch an online demo of the Criterion Service.