A nearly $400k grant has been awarded to study the use of PEG Writing in the classroom

A student teacher discusses PEG Writing score results.
A student teacher discusses PEG Writing score results. Photo credit: Elizabeth Adams, University of Delaware.

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has funded a partnership between Josh Wilson and Charles MacArthur, faculty in the University of Delaware School of Education, and Gaysha Beard, supervisor of English language arts (ELA) at Delaware’s Red Clay Consolidated School District.

The study will be conducted over two years and will include 2,880 students of diverse backgrounds in grades 3-5.

For the past three years Wilson has studied whether teachers can use software to motivate their students to write, and to improve their writing. His preliminary research shows a number of encouraging findings:

  • Student writing improves in response to feedback from automated scoring software.
  • The use of automated scoring software helps teachers to identify and support struggling writers more quickly.
  • Students with disabilities can improve their writing to meet that of their non-disabled peers by using automated scoring software.

The partnership will be the first to address how to best use automated scoring software in the classroom to maximize teaching and learning.

See the full article from the University of Delaware.