ETS Korea has partnered with I Hate Flying Bugs Inc. and ONEDATA to develop an AI-powered solution for evaluating and automatically scoring descriptive, essay-based, and oral performance assessments. The three companies recently announced the signing of a business agreement for the development and commercialization of this generative AI-based automated scoring platform, which focuses on evaluating problem-solving processes.
ETS Korea, a subsidiary of ETS Global BV (the administrator of TOEIC and TOEFL), is collaborating with EdTech company I Hate Flying Bugs Inc. and measurement and assessment R&D company ONEDATA. The companies share a vision that evaluating students’ problem-solving processes is crucial to teaching and learning. Through this collaboration, they aim to provide innovative assessment solutions to the Korean education sector and establish a foundation for entering the global market.
The platform will evaluate descriptive processes across five core subjects for elementary, middle, and high school levels. Using AI (specifically, a large language model), the system will analyze the problem-solving process in descriptive, essay, and oral responses to identify errors and automatically grade them. The goal is to achieve a high level of agreement with human grading (measured by a Kappa score of 0.61 or higher).
ETS brings extensive experience in educational evaluation, including automated scoring solutions like e-Rater and SpeechRater. With the largest pool of educational assessment researchers worldwide, ETS will share its expertise to optimize process and competency assessments tailored to Korea’s AI Digital Textbook (AIDT) ecosystem, ultimately enhancing public education quality.
Ye Hee-kyung, CEO of ETS Korea, stated, “We are delighted to develop innovative educational assessment solutions by combining ETS’s global expertise in educational evaluation with the innovation of Korea’s exceptional AI-driven EdTech companies. Through this initiative, we aim to provide more accurate and effective assessment tools for teaching and learning in Korea while contributing to the success of AIDT.”
I Hate Flying Bugs Inc. is an EdTech company developing platforms related to AIDT, scheduled for introduction in 2025. The company will focus on creating the AI-powered platform for descriptive, essay, and oral assessments and plans to integrate this solution into its existing services, Mildang PT and School PT, as well as its subscription-based AIDT platform.
Chanyong Park, CEO of I Hate Flying Bugs Inc., commented, “We are thrilled to collaborate with ETS Korea and ONEDATA to develop a world-class AI-powered assessment solution. This solution will enable more precise and reliable assessments in Korean education and serve as a stepping stone for us to enter the global education market.”
ONEDATA specializes in cognitive diagnostics and measurement assessment R&D. The company will leverage its patented technology for recommending AI-based optimal learning paths and content. It will focus on analyzing errors in descriptive, essay, and oral performance assessments and designing ontology-based automated scoring solutions.
