FeedbackFruits

Peter Bremen and Adrie Verhoeven, assistant professors Erasmus MC, have used the FeedbackFruits tool for automated feedback and peer review in the course ‘Scientific Writing’ of the med-school curriculum (1st year bachelor). For this course students in triplets have to write a scientific report/paper describing the results of a small experiment they performed together during a 2h practical. In the past, trained teaching assistants performed a two-step grading process consisting of an initial detailed feedback round followed by a grading round of the revised report (pass/fail).

Peter and Adrie were curious if it would be possible to use the feedback round as an additional active learning opportunity for the students. Their reasoning was that when students have to provide feedback on their peers’ work this may help them to improve their own work.

Beforehand, we provided the students with a model reference paper and a custom-made evaluation rubric. After uploading their report, we asked each student to use these two resources to provide feedback on the paper of one peer. Each group of three students thus received three different peer reviews for their report. Next, the students could revise their report and upload the final version. The teaching assistants then graded the revised report in a single step (pass/fail).

FeedbackFruits provides an easy-to-use yet customizable online environment for setting up the peer review process. The coordinator is able to interact with the students at all stages of the process and can moderate if necessary. FeedbackFruits also provides detailed statistical information (individual & population level) on e.g. time spent reviewing or number of comments, which helps greatly with monitoring student engagement.

Peter and Adrie found the combination of statistical information and direct interaction very helpful for monitoring the reviewing process and quality control.

Why does this tool enrich the education at the EUR?

Based on a random sample and on feedback received from our teaching assistants we judge that the quality of the papers handed in for grading is of similar quality when compared to previous years. From this year’s experience we conclude that peer-review guided by careful instruction (rubric and model reference paper) is an effective learning tool in the context of our course. The benefits of peer-review is twofold:

• Students more actively engage with the writing process by donning the writer’s hat as well as the corrector’s hat (educational advantage).
• Teaching assistants still have to read and evaluate the individual papers but have to spend less time giving detailed feedback, thus reducing the overall time-investment (financial advantage).

In what way do you use this tool during your course?

Students uploaded a first draft of their paper to receive built-in automated feedback from FeedbackFruits. This application is customized by the teacher to check for e.g. the needed sections (Title, Abstracts, Introduction, etc), word limit, and language. This may be helpful for students but the program does not allow screening for content-, context- and grammar-related issues.

Next, FeedbackFruits organizes the peer review process by assigning which paper has to be reviewed by whom, and gives information on deadlines. All in all, the program is easy to use but allows for a fair grade of customization. During the process we monitor that students submit their papers on time and that the feedback is in accordance with the grading rubric by looking at individual comments. As described above we also keep an eye on the statistics to keep track of potential issues worth looking into.

What do your students think of it?

FeedbackFruits also provides the possibility for students to rate the feedback they received. From these data, and other reactions we received from students we have the impression that students appreciated the comments of their peers and experienced them as useful. Importantly, several students mentioned that while providing feedback took some time, putting on the critics’ hat helped them with improving their own paper. They also better appreciated the time it takes to provide detailed feedback, which meant that in general they took the received feedback more seriously.

What other tips, tricks or advice would you give your fellow EUR teachers?

If you want to use peer review, make sure that you provide clear instructions. Given that the students are, if you will, still learning the ropes of the trade, it is important that they have the right tools at their disposal. In our case an analytic rubric and a model reference paper worked quite well. Make sure that the instructions you provide are as clear and unambiguous as possible.