What is a MAAS Audit & Review?
An Audit & Review is a review of finished work you wrote yourself. An expert in your discipline reads the draft against your rubric, scores it as a trial run, writes out where the draft sits on each criterion, then edits the text in Track Changes to strengthen the work, each edit carrying a comment that explains it. Passages that match a source or carry a high AI-detection signal are also revised to bring the similarity and AI scores down before you submit.
This service sets no target grade and carries no results-based refund, because MAAS is reviewing work you authored rather than building it with you. The trial grade is an estimate of how the draft reads today, not a prediction your marker is bound by. If the fit with your reviewer is not right, the remedy is a change of expert, not a guarantee.
Why does a finished draft still lose marks?
The drafts that reach MAAS EdTech are usually not badly written. They answer the wrong question, or the right one in the wrong proportion.
- The rubric was read once, at the start. Weighting decides where the marks sit, and a draft that spends half its length describing pays for it in the criterion worth the most.
- You cannot see your own gaps. After a week inside your own argument, the assumption you never made explicit reads as obvious to you and as missing to a marker.
- Feedback arrives too late to use. Marker comments land after submission, when nothing can be done with them. Carless and Boud (2018) call reading feedback and acting on it feedback literacy, and it is not a skill you can practise on comments that arrive once the work is gone.
- The originality report is a number with no explanation. A high percentage can be nothing but cited quotations, and a low one can hide an uncited paraphrase.
Who is Audit & Review for?
It suits people with a complete draft, a deadline close but not gone, and no reliable second reader.
- Students with a finished assignment, essay, report or case study, read against the rubric before submitting
- Writers holding supervisor comments and unsure what those comments ask for
- Anyone wanting an originality and AI screening explained flag by flag, not reduced to a percentage
- People who want their voice kept and every change approved by them
This is not for you if the work has not been written yet, because an Audit & Review improves the draft you have already written rather than producing a new piece from scratch.
Marking still follows the home campus's rubric, including for students on English-taught programmes in Canada, the UK, the US, Australia and Singapore, and on transnational programmes delivered in Vietnam.
What do you get?
Three files and the screening report, plus an hour or two of your own work to act on them.
Track Changes file and a clean copy
- Every edit visible in Track Changes, so you see how a sentence was corrected
- A clean copy for reading, and you decide which changes carry into what you submit
- Spelling, grammar, word choice and punctuation corrected, and unclear passages flagged for you to fix, with the argument left yours
- Inconsistencies against the referencing style your department requires flagged for you to correct, whether APA 7th, Harvard, MLA 9th, Chicago or Vancouver
Review Log
- A table mapping each substantive comment to the rubric criterion it belongs to
- The reason for each change, written out, so the log reads as a study note, not a list of corrections
- The gaps, meaning what the outline does not yet cover, so you know which ideas to add in your own words
The log exists because a correction you did not make yourself teaches you nothing. Cogie et al. (1999) argue the same for writing-centre practice, placing the value in the student working through the error rather than in a tutor removing it.
Originality and AI screening
- A similarity and AI-detection screening with industry-standard tools
- Each flag read for what it is, a cited quotation, standard disciplinary phrasing, or a passage needing its source restored
- Passages that match a source or carry a high AI-detection signal re-expressed or re-cited correctly by the expert in Track Changes, to bring the similarity and AI scores down
An AI-detection score is a signal, not proof, and it is least reliable for the people who use this service most. Liang et al. (2023) ran seven widely used detectors over essays by non-native English speakers and measured an average false-positive rate of 61.3%, with 97.8% of those essays flagged by at least one tool, while essays by native-speaking US school students were flagged at close to zero. Each flag is therefore read against your own drafting history before anything is changed, and the expert revises the passages that genuinely match a source or read mechanically, rather than rewriting the whole piece just to push a number to zero.
Trial grade
- A criterion-level trial grade on the draft as it stands, with the reasoning shown
- A short note on what would move each criterion, ranked by how much it is worth
- The grade expressed on the scale your university uses, whether a UK honours band, an Australian High Distinction to Pass scale, or a GPA point
What does the reviewer actually check?
The reading follows your own rubric. The rubrics MAAS sees most often in UK and Australian programmes group their criteria into four families, the argument, the use and currency of sources, structure and signposting, and academic style with referencing accuracy. Each family gets its own pass.
- Argument and analysis. Whether each section answers the question in the brief, whether claims are supported, and whether the work analyses rather than describes, which is the reason MAAS sees most often behind a competent draft landing a band low.
- Sources. Whether the literature is recent enough for the field, whether each in-text citation has a matching entry in the reference list, and whether paraphrased material is genuinely re-expressed rather than patch-written.
- Structure. For an assignment, the introduction, the ordering of the body and the conclusion, and whether the opening states what the piece sets out to argue.
- Style and format. Academic register, tense in Methodology and Findings, table and figure captions, appendix order, and the word count against the limit the brief sets.
Does a review before submission actually change anything?
Research on assessment is consistent on one point. Feedback is useful when it names the distance between where the work is and where the criteria say it should be, and when the learner still has time to close it. Sadler (1989) makes the condition explicit, since the learner has to hold a concept of the standard, compare their own work against it, and act to close the gap. Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) build the same idea into seven principles of good feedback practice, and clarifying what counts as good performance comes first among them. Panadero and Jonsson (2013) reviewed rubrics used for formative purposes and concluded that the gains come mainly from transparency and supported self-assessment, which is to say from students seeing what is expected and judging their own work against it, rather than from handing out the rubric on its own.
That is the design of this service. The rubric is read criterion by criterion, the distance is named in the Review Log, and the draft comes back while you can still act on it.
What is the boundary between reviewing and rewriting?
MAAS reviews, comments and edits at the level of expression. It does not write the argument.
Universities draw their own lines here, more tightly than most students expect, and the lines differ. The University of Edinburgh (2025) limits a third party to local corrections and to marking a passage as unclear with an explanation, rather than rewriting it, restructuring the argument or adding content. Swansea's policy states that professional proofreading services are not permitted for taught undergraduate and postgraduate work unless approved as a reasonable adjustment, while research degree candidates may use them inside a defined set of rules (Swansea University, n.d.). Loughborough classes changes substantial enough that the work is no longer the student's own as contract cheating, whether or not money changed hands (Loughborough University, n.d.). The University of Leeds (n.d.) makes the same point about additions in its academic integrity and assistance policy, since nothing new goes into the draft, and Victoria University of Wellington (2026) puts it plainly for students, saying that asking someone to proofread or comment is acceptable while having work written or deeply edited for you is not.
Read those rules as the reason for the way this service is built, not as a claim that every university would permit it. A review that comments on argument and tightens expression goes further than proofreading, which is exactly why the rules below are fixed and not negotiable per case:
- Every change arrives in Track Changes with a comment, and you approve or reject each one
- Gaps in the argument are named in the Review Log for you to fill in your own words
- No new claims, data, figures or sources are inserted into your draft
- Nothing is translated, and nothing is cut purely to make a word count
- Read your programme handbook or assessment regulations first, because what is permitted differs by university and by level of study
Where your university requires it, disclose the support you used. The academic integrity policy sets out how MAAS EdTech works within institutional rules.
How is this different from the other review services?
|
What it answers |
What you get back |
| Academic Integrity Check |
Is anything in this draft an originality or AI problem? |
Similarity and AI reports, each flag explained, an action list, and optional paraphrasing or proofreading |
| Audit & Review |
How would a marker score this draft, and what is missing? |
A trial grade by criterion, a Review Log, Track Changes edits, plus the screening, as one engagement rather than separate add-ons |
| Assignment Editing & Revision |
This is written, does the language hold up? |
Track Changes language and formatting edits you approve, no trial grade |
For a first read at no cost, the free MAAS Grade Check tool returns an estimated grade with comments from your draft and rubric. A model trained on real marked student work grades it, not a reviewer, so treat it as a rough bearing. An Audit & Review is the human version, with a discipline expert, a Review Log and edits inside your own file.
If your draft is not written yet, neither of these is what you need. Coaching from an outline onwards sits in assignment and essay support and, for a thesis, in dissertation and thesis support.
Who will actually work with you?
Your reviewer is in your discipline, because "critical analysis" means one thing in law, another in nursing and another in civil engineering, and a rubric only makes sense to someone who has applied it. MAAS EdTech keeps expert profiles anonymous by policy, so you see the level, the field and the country, and you read the reasoning in the Review Log.
See the anonymised expert roster on our experts page, and how engagements have run on our success stories.
Have a draft you want read before you submit it? support@maasedtech.com or +84 979 422 393 (WhatsApp).
Not ready to book a call? Send the draft and the rubric on WhatsApp or Messenger for a quote on the review. Your draft stays confidential and is never shared with third parties.
References
Carless, D., & Boud, D. (2018). The development of student feedback literacy: Enabling uptake of feedback. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(8), 1315–1325. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2018.1463354
Cogie, J., Strain, K., & Lorinskas, S. (1999). Avoiding the proofreading trap: The value of the error correction process. The Writing Center Journal, 19(2), 7–31.
Liang, W., Yuksekgonul, M., Mao, Y., Wu, E., & Zou, J. (2023). GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers. Patterns, 4(7), 100779. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2023.100779
Loughborough University. (n.d.). Proofreading. Student Handbook. https://www.lboro.ac.uk/students/handbook/assessments/coursework-feedback/proofreading/
Nicol, D. J., & Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 199–218. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600572090
Panadero, E., & Jonsson, A. (2013). The use of scoring rubrics for formative assessment purposes revisited: A review. Educational Research Review, 9, 129–144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2013.01.002
Sadler, D. R. (1989). Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional Science, 18(2), 119–144. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00117714
Swansea University. (n.d.). Proof reading policy. Academic Quality Services. https://hwb.swansea.ac.uk/academic-life/academic-regulations/aqs-policies/proof-reading-policy/
University of Edinburgh. (2025). Proofreading of student assessments [Guidance]. Registry Services. https://registryservices.ed.ac.uk/
University of Leeds. (n.d.). Academic integrity and assistance policy. Secretariat.
Victoria University of Wellington. (2026). Understanding academic misconduct. https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/students/study/exams/academic-integrity/understanding-academic-misconduct
