  Short answer scoring (SAS) is the task of grading short text written by a
learner. In recent years, deep-learning-based approaches have substantially
improved the performance of SAS models, but how to guarantee high-quality
predictions still remains a critical issue when applying such models to the
education field. Towards guaranteeing high-quality predictions, we present the
first study of exploring the use of human-in-the-loop framework for minimizing
the grading cost while guaranteeing the grading quality by allowing a SAS model
to share the grading task with a human grader. Specifically, by introducing a
confidence estimation method for indicating the reliability of the model
predictions, one can guarantee the scoring quality by utilizing only
predictions with high reliability for the scoring results and casting
predictions with low reliability to human graders. In our experiments, we
investigate the feasibility of the proposed framework using multiple confidence
estimation methods and multiple SAS datasets. We find that our
human-in-the-loop framework allows automatic scoring models and human graders
to achieve the target scoring quality.
