Okan Bulut
Author directory2026
The Scoring Paradox: Multi-Agent Architectures for Unbiased Feedback Optimization
Okan Bulut | Bin Tan | Elisabetta Mazzullo | Cole Walsh
Proceedings of the Artificial Intelligence in Measurement and Education Conference (AIME-Con): Coordinated Session Papers
Okan Bulut | Bin Tan | Elisabetta Mazzullo | Cole Walsh
Proceedings of the Artificial Intelligence in Measurement and Education Conference (AIME-Con): Coordinated Session Papers
Does grade awareness bias automatically generated feedback? We present a multi-agent artificial intelligence (AI) framework that contrasts score-blind and score-informed evaluators and reconciles their critiques. Across 908 feedback blocks, score exposure systematically biased the model’s critique: harsher at low grades, warmer at high (halo/horn effects). Isolating a score-blind judgment improved score-alignment without sacrificing faithfulness.
2025
Enhancing Essay Scoring with GPT-2 Using Back Translation Techniques
Aysegul Gunduz | Mark Gierl | Okan Bulut
Proceedings of the Artificial Intelligence in Measurement and Education Conference (AIME-Con): Full Papers
Aysegul Gunduz | Mark Gierl | Okan Bulut
Proceedings of the Artificial Intelligence in Measurement and Education Conference (AIME-Con): Full Papers
This study evaluates GPT-2 (small) for automated essay scoring on the ASAP dataset. Back-translation (English–Turkish–English) improved performance, especially on imbalanced sets. QWK scores peaked at 0.77. Findings highlight augmentation’s value and the need for more advanced, rubric-aware models for fairer assessment.
2024
Item Difficulty and Response Time Prediction with Large Language Models: An Empirical Analysis of USMLE Items
Okan Bulut | Guher Gorgun | Bin Tan
Proceedings of the 19th Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (BEA 2024)
Okan Bulut | Guher Gorgun | Bin Tan
Proceedings of the 19th Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (BEA 2024)
This paper summarizes our methodology and results for the BEA 2024 Shared Task. This competition focused on predicting item difficulty and response time for retired multiple-choice items from the United States Medical Licensing Examination® (USMLE®). We extracted linguistic features from the item stem and response options using multiple methods, including the BiomedBERT model, FastText embeddings, and Coh-Metrix. The extracted features were combined with additional features available in item metadata (e.g., item type) to predict item difficulty and average response time. The results showed that the BiomedBERT model was the most effective in predicting item difficulty, while the fine-tuned model based on FastText word embeddings was the best model for predicting response time.