Rubric-based grading of open-ended answers
- Spoken responses are transcribed, then graded as text against exam rubrics rather than scored on audio features.
- Eighteen rubric prompts live in the database rather than in application code, so examiners can revise criteria without a deploy.
- Grading runs as a structured pipeline, producing component judgements rather than a single opaque verdict.
- Final scores are recomputed in Python from those components, so the number a learner sees never depends on model arithmetic.
That last decision is the one that makes the feature shippable. A language model is good at judging whether a response met a criterion and unreliable at totalling the result. Separating the judgement from the arithmetic means a grading error is a rubric problem you can inspect and fix, not a silent miscalculation in a learner's band score.

