As of Brillium release 2026.1.0, the Essay question type and scoring process have been enhanced to support improved manual and AI-assisted scoring workflows. These updates are designed to make essay scoring faster, more flexible, and easier to manage across multiple assessments.
What Has Changed
Essay Questions
Essay questions now support multiple rubrics per question.
Each rubric has its own score assignment.
Each rubric is assigned a percentage weight.
The weighted percentages determine how much of the total question score each rubric contributes.
For example, if an essay question is worth 20 points and a rubric is weighted at 50%, that rubric can award up to 10 points.
As before, Brillium recommends assigning 10 or more total points to an essay question to allow for meaningful scoring.
Essay Scoring Workflow
The essay scoring workflow has been redesigned to streamline how scorers find and grade essay responses.
All essay questions that require scoring and that the logged-in user has access to are displayed in a single view.
This allows scorers to move quickly between assessments and questions without repeatedly changing filters.
Working with Multiple Rubrics
When viewing an essay question:
Clicking an existing rubric name opens it in a modal window.
Each rubric displays its assigned score percentage.
Adding Additional Rubrics
Additional rubrics can now be added to any essay question.
When new rubrics are added, the original 100% weight is distributed across all rubrics.
The distribution is fully editable.
Example
Rubric 1: 60%
Rubric 2: 40%
This allows scoring to be divided across more specific criteria, instead of relying on a single set of instructions as in previous versions.
Viewing Essay Questions That Need Scoring
The Essay screen now provides three filtered views.
Need Review
The Need Review view shows all essay questions that require review and scoring.
Recently Graded
The Recently Graded view shows graded essay questions.
Pending AI Grading
The Pending AI Grading view shows all essay questions that are currently awaiting or undergoing review and scoring by the AI Services.
For each essay response, the list includes:
Date the response was submitted
Assessment ID
Assessment name
Workspace location
Essay question ID
Primary test-taker identifier (email address by default)
Test-taker full name, if available
Current grade - Unscored essay responses display a grade of 0.
Grade source (displayed after grading)
Manually scored essays will display a grade source of Manual.
Concern level for AI-scored essays, if applicable
Scoring Essay Questions (Manual Scoring)
Selecting an Essay for Scoring
IMPORTANT:When essay questions are used within an assessment, if assessment result emails are enabled (Notifications tab), change the timing of the assessment email so that it only goes out AFTER the essay questions have been scored.
Her sis how to ensure the score email is delivered after the essays are scored:
Select Assessments from the main menu
Select the Assessment
Select the Notifications tab
Select "When Essays are Scored" from the Enable Respondent Results Email dropdown
Save your changes
Select notification email to be delivered after essays are scored
To score an essay:
Locate the essay question in the Need Review list.
Select the Edit icon in the Actions column on the right.
The scoring screen displays more detailed information than before, including:
Primary test-taker identifier
Test-taker name, if available
Date and time the response was submitted
Time spent responding to the question Question
Topic name
Question text
The essay response
Understanding the Score Display
At the top of the screen:
The current score shows how many points have been applied to the response.
A Modify button allows you to update the score.
Below the score:
All associated rubrics are displayed.
Each rubric shows the percentage and score applied to it.
For existing essay questions, a single rubric is displayed with a 100% weight.
Modifying an Essay Score
To update a score:
Select Modify.
Enter the percentage awarded for each rubric, up to the maximum allowed by its weight.
Provide required feedback explaining the scoring change.
Select Save.
The system automatically calculates the total essay score based on the rubric percentages.
Feedback History
At the bottom of the scoring screen, the Feedback History section shows:
All previous score changes
Whether changes were made manually or through AI scoring or a combination of Manual + AI
Associated feedback for each change
Feedback is required for every score modification to ensure transparency and auditability.
Summary
The enhanced essay scoring workflow provides:
Support for multiple weighted rubrics per essay question
A unified view of all essay questions awaiting scoring
aster navigation across assessments
Clear tracking of scoring changes and feedback
This workflow allows AI assisted essay scorers to work more efficiently while giving organizations greater flexibility in how essay responses are evaluated.
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