Introducing the Homework Auto Scoring Feature

Off2Class is pleased to announce our new Homework Auto Scoring Feature, designed to grade as much of your students’ work as possible.

Check out this short demo of the Homework Auto Scoring feature in action:

We believe that improving English Language Learning outcomes starts with saving teachers time. Team member Christine walks through the Homework Autoscoring Feature in this video:

Reviewing and scoring submitted homework is a pivotal part of educators’ regular tasks. This is because it enables the teacher to gain insight into students’ learning. Simultaneously, it is an opportunity to provide personalized feedback — to find strengths and weaknesses in the student’s knowledge of the lesson materials.

Where assessments are submitted online, there is an opportunity to remove some of the manual labor from teachers. Off2Class’s Homework Auto Scoring feature takes care of students’ responses to multiple choice and gap fill questions (among others), saving time and energy.

Of course, not all questions can yet be scored automatically. Paragraph writing still needs a teacher’s careful eye. In the future, we hope to enhance the Auto Scoring Feature to deal with more and more question types. Until then, we invite you to watch the video above to see how the feature works.

What can the Auto Scoring Feature do?

In short, the Auto Scoring Feature can take care of question types for which there is a unique answer. This means that the system can provide a score for a question that only has one possible correct answer according to the instructions provided.

Multiple-choice questions are the obvious example, in which a single correct answer is possible from a number of options. For example, the Auto Scoring Feature views the response provided by the student to multiple-choice questions, then it displays the student’s response in either green or orange depending on the answer key. It will also score the question depending on the answer key.

The Auto Scoring Feature will add points for each Section of Homework as well as an overall score for the entire Homework. This is displayed both on the Student’s History and the Student Panel.

What can’t the Auto Scoring Feature do?

At the moment, the Auto Scoring Feature can’t deal with questions for which multiple answers are possible. This means that the teacher is required to review a student’s response to a task such as ‘Write a description on your typical day,’ since an infinite number of responses are possible.

In general, longer written responses and audio recordings are not dealt with by this feature. The system leaves the ‘score’ at zero until the teacher reviews the student’s responses. When a teacher adds or amends a score, the score is added to the overall score for the homework.

What if I don’t agree with the answer in the Off2Class Answer Key?

At times students misread or misinterpret instructions to a question, and they provide an answer which is incorrect according to the instruction, yet the answer may be a correct statement in English.

As an example, a student may use the past simple as a response to a question for which the instructions asks for responses using the present perfect. The system will mark the student’s answer as wrong, which strictly speaking, it is. However, we acknowledge that you may want to provide a score for the response which is a correct statement in English. The system allows you to do this.

We kindly ask you to watch the video. Just a few minutes of your time will save you much more if you decide to implement the feature.

That’s all!

Ultimately, how you use the Off2Class Homework Autoscoring Feature will depend on your circumstances. Our experience says you’ll be surprised and delighted to see the results. We made them for you because our mission is to support teachers and districts. We can’t wait to see what you come up with! As with everything we release, expect improvements and additions as time goes on. Feel free to leave a comment below.