The early automated writing evaluation (eAWE) framework

ABSTRACT

We propose a framework designed to guide the development of automated writing practice and formative evaluation and feedback for young children (K-5^th grade) – the early Automated Writing Evaluation (early-AWE) Framework. e-AWE is grounded on the fundamental assumption that e-AWE is needed for young developing readers, but must incorporate advanced technologies inherent to AWE, speech recognition, and games. In line with interdisciplinary views on writing to support learners in the classroom, e-AWE must support a community of learners and interlace reading and writing instructional activities combined with feedback to use reading and writing strategies. The e-AWE Framework provides a guide for the development of tools that leverage and integrate cutting-edge technologies, some of which only recently have become widely available in educational settings. These tools can continue to provide usable and feasible means to offer high-quality automated writing practice and feedback to a diverse and large number of students.

KEYWORDS:

• Writing
• automated writing assessment
• writing development
• reading
• awe

Acknowledgments

This paper was partially supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grants R305A190050, R305A180261, and R305A170163, and by the Office of Naval Research Grants N00014-20-1-2623 and N00014-17-1-2300 to Arizona State University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Danielle S. McNamara

Dr. Danielle S. McNamara is a Professor of Psychology in the Psychology Department at Arizona State University. She conducts research on topics related to educational technologies (see adaptiveliteracy.com), writing, reading comprehension, game-based learning, learning analytics, learning engineering, and natural language processing (see soletlab.asu.edu).

Panayiota Kendeou

Dr. Panayiota (Pani) Kendeou is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Guy Bond Chair in Reading in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota. In her research she examines the cognitive processes of reading comprehension in an effort to advance our theoretical understanding of reading and transform reading instruction in K-12 schools (Reading + Learning Lab; https://inferencegalaxy.com/).