Pastakaliiga rewards students for weekly handwritten essays

Pastakaliiga, an education platform that uses artificial intelligence to assess handwritten essays, rewards students for writing regularly, its creators Sandra and Gloria Roosna told ERR’s R2 Päev.

Students write an essay each week, which is assessed by AI and earns them points that can be exchanged for prizes. Sandra Roosna said students are guaranteed a reward after writing for four consecutive weeks.

The platform was inspired in part by Gloria’s own reluctance to write essays. After she was briefly hospitalized during the summer, her mother suggested she start writing to pass the time, but Gloria said she had no motivation. She added that many of her classmates also struggled to find the time or motivation to write.

The Roosna family initially built Pastakaliiga as a Sunday project, using AI to develop the platform. They fed it information about Estonian and the criteria used to assess essays in the state exam, then tested and refined its assessments. Sandra said the AI gives students feedback on spelling and essay structure, doing work similar to a teacher’s.

Participants can join individually, as a group or as a class. They can write up to three essays a week. The AI assigns a topic, and each essay must be 150 words long. Students have 45 minutes to write and must put a secret code at the top of the page. They then photograph and submit their handwritten essay. Results and a leaderboard are published at 3 p.m. on Tuesdays.

Pastakaliiga is aimed mainly at young people aged 12 to 15. Sandra Roosna said the platform also aims to preserve handwriting skills, which she said children are using less often. The family is already considering a Mataliiga, and its first prototype is in development.