At a certain point in time, every writing researcher needs to assess the quality of writing. But doing this in a reliable and valid way is often a challenge. Maarten Goossens and Renske Bouwer presented D-PAC, a challenging new tool to assess competencies such as writing.

This digital assessment platform is based on the comparative judgement of texts, which are presented in pairs. Assessors can compare and judge the texts multiple times in different pairs to finally get a ranking order from the worst to the best text. You can also enrich the results with meaningful feedback to improve the quality of your assessment. The conclusion: use D-PAC to select benchmarks that indicate performance levels, use it to place texts on an existing scale, use it for peer feedback, use it for teachers professional development… In short: use it! 😉
—Katrien Verreyken