Automated feedback can help students become better writers

Providing detailed feedback on students’ writing skills takes teachers a great deal of time. Automated writing tools can help with this, but many existing approaches provide highly specific feedback on language that is difficult for students to interpret. Abbas therefore investigated whether simple, graphical methods work better.

Visual comments

He carried out his research in three phases. First, essays by Dutch students were analysed to identify the appropriate features for assessing texts. These features formed the basis for the design of a new feedback method that analyses texts and provides visual comments and comments in plain language. The system was first evaluated with German Master’s students and subsequently tested by Pakistani students studying English. The conclusion: the automated visual feedback enabled the students to revise their essays and improved the quality of their writing.

Mohsin Abbas (Lahore, 1985) is Director of Assessments and Examinations at the Government of Punjab, Pakistan. Previously, he was a lecturer at the Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Central Punjab. On Friday 30 October 2026 at 1.30 pm, he will defend his thesis, *Computationally Efficient Graph-Based NLP System for Automated Essay Feedback*, at the Open Universiteit in Heerlen. His supervisor is Prof. Dr. M. Kalz (Open Universiteit and Pädagogische Hochschule Heidelberg). His co-supervisors are Prof. Dr. W.A. Dolfsma (Open Universiteit) and Dr P. van Rosmalen (Maastricht University). The defence can be attended in person at the Open University in Heerlen or followed online via ou.nl/live.