Blaise – A Tablet-Based Paperless Submission and Grading System for Writing Courses

This paper describes Blaise, a software/hardware system designed to support writing programs. Students write papers using the Blaise editor, a simple text editor and submit them electronically to a backend database. Instructors download student papers from the database onto a tablet PC and then use pen-like markup to grade the papers. These papers are then returned electronically to the students. Because modern writing programs emphasize working through drafts and peer-review, Blaise maintains multiple drafts for each assignment, and also supports multiple graders. Furthermore, the backend database allows students to maintain a long-term writing portfolio and enables institutions to track and collect data for assessment of writing programs. Blaise is free, open-source software available from the Blaise website: www.blaise.gwu.edu. Because it is written in Java, Blaise can be used on Windows, Mac and Linux.