Learning to Grade Short Answer Questions using Semantic Similarity Measures and Dependency Graph Alignments

Michael Mohler1,  Razvan Bunescu2,  Rada Mihalcea1
1University of North Texas, 2Ohio University


Abstract

In this work we address the task of computer-assisted assessment of short student answers. We combine several graph alignment features with lexical semantic similarity measures using machine learning techniques and show that the student answers can be more accurately graded than if the semantic measures were used in isolation. We also present a first attempt to align the dependency graphs of the student and the instructor answers in order to make use of a structural component in the automatic grading of student answers.




Full paper: http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/P/P11/P11-1076.pdf