Unsupervised machine scoring of free-response answers

A system comprising:

• a processing system;
• a storage system;
• and
• instructions stored on the storage system that when executed by the processing system direct the processing system to at least:
• receive a set of free-response answers, each free-response answer of the set of free-response answers comprising an associated response content;
• determine from the associated response content of the set of free-response answers, a commonality content by identifying semantically related response content from the set of free-response answers;
• for each free-response answer of the set of free-response answers, determine an amount of similarity between the associated response content for that free-response answer and the commonality content;
• assign a similarity value from the amount of similarity to that free-response answer;
• and
• provide the set of free-response answers and their corresponding assigned similarity values.

A computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon that, when executed by a processing system, perform a method comprising:

• receiving a set of free-response answers, each free-response answer of the set of free-response answers comprising an associated response content;
• determining, from the associated response content of the set of free-response answers, a commonality content by identifying semantically related response content from the set of free-response answers;
• for each free-response answer of the set of free-response answers, determining an amount of similarity between the associated response content for that free-response answer and the commonality content;
• assigning a similarity value from the amount of similarity to that free-response answer;
• and
• providing the set of free-response answers and their corresponding assigned similarity values.