CERCA AI Scoring is Here!

The ThinkCERCA team is so excited to bring you our new CERCA AI Scoring experience to the platform. This product update comes directly from the feedback of our amazing partners. CERCA AI Scoring provides students with real-time proficiency feedback so teachers can focus on personalizing student learning experiences. 

What's New

Our CERCA AI Scoring tool automatically evaluates student writing across five critical dimensions:

• Claim: Assesses the clarity and strength of the central argument
• Evidence: Evaluates the quality and relevance of supporting evidence
• Reasoning: Analyzes how effectively the author connects  evidence to the claim
• Coherence: Measures organizational structure and flow
• Audience appeal: Gauges language use and the stylistic effectiveness of the author’s choices

The tool provides scores, actionable feedback, and a personalized growth focus for each student, highlighting the area that needs the most improvement to accelerate writing development.

Built on Teacher Expertise

“Our goal is to provide reliable rubric scoring and meaningful writing feedback that emulates the insight of a highly skilled and nurturing educator. Generative AI gets us much of the way there by recognizing patterns in context, semantics, and the nuances of student writing, making it a powerful tool for analyzing text across subjects and writing styles. ThinkCERCA takes it further by anchoring our development and evaluation process in human expertise, ensuring fairness, accuracy, and pedagogically sound guidance to support student learning outcomes.” said Dr. Emily LeBlanc, ThinkCERCA’s AI Lead.

Our autoscoring system isn't simply using off-the-shelf AI— the success of our system depends on the expertise of experienced educators and AI experts working together to ensure that the output is well-suited to improving student outcomes and streamlining teacher workflows. The tool undergoes continuous quality assurance, with feedback by secondary human review by partner educators to ensure accuracy and reliability. This rigorous validation process maintains assessment integrity while delivering the consistent and reliable data that teachers and students need.

This is a new dimension of ThinkCERCA’s comprehensive assessment and feedback system. Unlike past automated scoring tools, the experience is designed to engage and motivate students. 

We’re not asking students to guess the “right answer.” At ThinkCERCA educators help students develop the skills to consume complex information, think about it critically, and express their own point of view effectively. 

We are excited to help educators nurture confident students who can think critically, so they can lead the way!

How It Works

1. Seamless Integration: When students submit writing assignments, their work is automatically routed for AI evaluation—no additional steps required.
2. Immediate Assessment: Using a novel system created by ThinkCERCA's AI experts and developers, the tool leverages generative AI  and other state-of-the-art NLP techniques to evaluate each submission according to grade-specific criteria.
3. Actionable Feedback: The system generates specific, constructive insights for each area of the rubric that highlight strengths while providing clear action steps writers can take to improve their writing.
4. Personalized Growth Focus: The tool identifies the rubric category with the lowest score, prioritizing fundamental skills when scores are tied.

See It In Action

FAQs

Can I edit the scores given by CERCA AI?

Yes, teachers can edit the numerical scores and update the growth statements.

Can I approve the CERCA AI scores before the students see them?

No. The students will be able to see the formative feedback and score given by CERCA AI immediately, however, these scores do not automatically go into the gradebook. You can assure your students that you will review and approve the scores before they go into your gradebook. 

What if I use the Benchmark Evaluation Services?

Benchmarks assigned via our Benchmark Evaluation Services will not have CERCA AI Scoring turned on. 

What if I don’t use the ThinkCERCA Rubrics? 

CERCA AI Scoring for other rubrics is in development.

Can I turn off autoscoring?

We encourage everyone to try out this exciting new feature! However, if you’d like to turn it off simply email support@thinkcerca.com.