Platform for administering and evaluating narrative essay examinations

A processor implemented system for processing a response to essay prompts that request a narrative response, comprising:

• one or more data processors;
• a computer-readable medium encoded with instructions for commanding the one or more data processors to execute steps of a process, the steps including:
• accessing a data structure associated with a narrative essay;
• analyzing the essay to generate an organization subscore, wherein the organization subscore is generated using a graph metric by identifying content words in each sentence of the essay and populating a data structure with links between related content words in neighboring sentences;
• determining a content word metric by determining a proportion of words in the essay that are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, wherein the organization subscore is determined based on the links and the content word metric;
• analyzing the essay to generate a development subscore, wherein the development subscore is generated using a transition metric by accessing a transition cue data store and identifying transition words in the essay;
• determining an event metric by accessing an event pair database that identifies pairs of words and an association value for each pair of words, extracting pairs of words from the essay;
• determining a stative metric by accessing a stative verb database, wherein the stative verb database contains verbs that describe states rather than events, wherein the development subscore is based on a number of words in the essay that match words in the transition due data store and the content word metric, the event metric and the stative metric;
• and
• determining a narrative quality metric based on the organization subscore and the development subscore, wherein the narrative quality metric is stored in a computer readable medium and is outputted for display on a graphical user interface, transmitted across a computer network, or printed.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium encoded with instructions for commanding one or more data processors to execute steps of a method of processing a response to essay prompts that request a narrative response, the steps comprising:

• accessing a data structure associated with a narrative essay;
• analyzing the essay to generate an organization subscore, wherein the organization subscore is generated using a graph metric by identifying content words in each sentence of the essay and populating a data structure with links between related content words in neighboring sentences;
• determining a content word metric by determining a proportion of words in the essay that are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, wherein the organization subscore is determined based on the links and the content word metric;
• analyzing the essay to generate a development subscore, wherein the development subscore is generated using a transition metric by accessing a transition cue data store and identifying transition words in the essay;
• determining an event metric by accessing an event pair database that identifies pairs of words and an association value for each pair of words, extracting pairs of words from the essay;
• determining a stative metric by accessing a stative verb database, wherein the stative verb database contains verbs that describe states rather than events, wherein the development subscore is based on a number of words in the essay that match words in the transition due data store, the content word metric, the event metric and the stative metric;
• and
• determining a narrative quality metric based on the organization subscore and the development subscore, wherein the narrative quality metric is stored in a computer readable medium and is outputted for display on a graphical user interface, transmitted across a computer network, or printed.