MI Write has its roots in the 1960s when Ellis Batten Page knew that there was a better way to wade through the mountain of student grading he faced every weekend. He knew there was a better way to get students to write more and to use computers to help both teachers and students move through the writing process more efficiently and effectively.

With that motivation, the PEG (Project Essay Grade) engine was born. However, while the 60s were an exciting time of creativity and new ideas, the capability of computers at that time limited PEG’s power. A few decades later, the abilities of computers caught up with Page’s idea, and PEG moved forward. Seeing the potential that PEG offered, Measurement Incorporated (MI) acquired PEG and built a classroom learning tool around the powerful engine.

MI Write (formerly known as PEG Writing) quickly became MI’s flagship formative automated writing evaluation (AWE) tool. Former teachers and educators lead the planning and development that fueled MI Write’s growth. Through the team’s experience in the classroom, MI Write is constantly evolving to support digital teaching and learning.

MI Write allows teachers to assign more writing and focus their feedback efforts and affords students the increased writing practice opportunities they need to improve writing quality. Knowing that timely feedback and frequent writing opportunities are essential to student growth, MI Write’s automated writing quality scores provides timely and reliable assessment data—which can be used to examine changes in performance over time—and automated feedback helps students improve their knowledge of writing quality criteria.

Today MI Write is the most extensively researched AWE tool available. Researchers have examined many facets of MI Write, including the efficacy of automated scoring and feedback in improving writing outcomes, the accuracy of automated scoring as a screener for at-risk writers, effects of AWE in naturalistic implementation contexts, and best practices in AWE implementation to improve writing instruction. You can read all about this exciting research here.