Assessing Online Writing Feedback Resources: Generative AI vs. Good Samaritans

Shabnam Behzad, Omid Kashefi, Swapna Somasundaran


Abstract
Providing constructive feedback on student essays is a critical factor in improving educational results; however, it presents notable difficulties and may demand substantial time investments, especially when aiming to deliver individualized and informative guidance. This study undertakes a comparative analysis of two readily available online resources for students seeking to hone their skills in essay writing for English proficiency tests: 1) essayforum.com, a widely used platform where students can submit their essays and receive feedback from volunteer educators at no cost, and 2) Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT. By contrasting the feedback obtained from these two resources, we posit that they can mutually reinforce each other and are more helpful if employed in conjunction when seeking no-cost online assistance. The findings of this research shed light on the challenges of providing personalized feedback and highlight the potential of AI in advancing the field of automated essay evaluation.
Anthology ID:
2024.lrec-main.144
Volume:
Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024)
Month:
May
Year:
2024
Address:
Torino, Italia
Editors:
Nicoletta Calzolari, Min-Yen Kan, Veronique Hoste, Alessandro Lenci, Sakriani Sakti, Nianwen Xue
Venues:
LREC | COLING
SIG:
Publisher:
ELRA and ICCL
Note:
Pages:
1638–1644
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.144
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Shabnam Behzad, Omid Kashefi, and Swapna Somasundaran. 2024. Assessing Online Writing Feedback Resources: Generative AI vs. Good Samaritans. In Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024), pages 1638–1644, Torino, Italia. ELRA and ICCL.
Cite (Informal):
Assessing Online Writing Feedback Resources: Generative AI vs. Good Samaritans (Behzad et al., LREC-COLING 2024)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.144.pdf