Meaningful Assessment of Free-form Drawings

BeSocratic is a flexible, web-based system that recognizes and responds to free-form student input. Using a pen or touch interface, students may respond naturally to questions posed by the system. At the same time, the structures that students draw are rigid enough that they may be automatically evaluated. This allows the applications to prompt the student with multi-tiered feedback when the students are having difficulties. Furthermore, BeSocratic allows for teachers to analyze the student work in a variety of meaningful ways and give insights into a student's thought process.

We are developing tutorials and formative assessment activities based on the available evidence and our own research into how people learn. We have chosen chemistry and molecular biology as our “test-bed” for the development of these materials because we have a strong research team in place in these disciplines. However, the BeSocratic system can be readily applied to a wide range of disciplines, including ecology, engineering, mathematics, physics, and physiology, and tutorials in all of these areas are planned.

This research is currently supported by several grants from the NSF. More information on the grants that have provided funding for this research can be found here.