Insights: Boost writing skills with FeedbackFruits

With 1,000 students submitting 700-word essays, the teaching team faced a hefty 120-hour marking task. They saw this as a chance to boost students’ analytical skills while managing the workload. Their goal: find a creative solution to sharpen critical thinking and provide timely, helpful feedback.

FeedbackFruits’ Peer Review was scaled to facilitate draft essay reviews. Since 2023, the team has been piloting the use of the Peer Review tool to facilitate a draft essay peer-review process. This approach not only enhanced student learning by engaging them in the assessment process and enabling them to learn from one another, but also helped teaching staff manage the workload.

The process involved:

1. Submission: Students submitted a draft version of their essay and reviewed three peers’ drafts using a rubric provided by the teaching team.
2. Peer review: Drafts and reviews were anonymised to ensure unbiased feedback. Each student reviewed three of their peers’ submissions using the rubric.
3. Feedback: Students received anonymous feedback from their peers, which they could use to improve their final submissions.

The use of peer review transformed the writing skills of first-year engineering students. Key outcomes included:

• Improved student engagement: The knowledge that their work would be read by others and the actual feedback from peers encouraged students to put more effort into their writing, resulting in better final submissions.
• Interim feedback: The peer review process provided interim feedback, which was crucial for students to refine their work before final submission.
• Skill development: Despite some students initially choosing engineering to avoid writing, the course highlighted the importance of writing skills in the field. Scaffolding this skill development through peer review helped students practice and improve. Having to review their peers’ work helped students develop evaluative judgement skills.

Overall, by fostering early engagement and reflective learning, the tool has helped students produce better quality work.

“I think FeedbackFruits was very good in encouraging students to put more effort in earlier on and ultimately is bringing about better results in the end.

 

“Part of the feedback that we ask the students to give each other was to try mark the three other students against that same rubric that their own work is going to be marked on against. The idea there was that, you know, that would help students to think in terms of the rubric to reflect on their own writing as well.” – Michael Hoffman

Sharing average grades from previous years helps set realistic expectations for students about the difference between peer and teacher-awarded marks, as students often grade peers more generously.

Don’t hesitate to use peer review also in very large classes (500+ students) as it can effectively manage class size while enhancing students’ writing and critical thinking skills. Ensure the rubric is well-designed for clear evaluation criteria. Assigning peer feedback can be both empowering and motivational for students.

For Michael, setting up the FeedbackFruits tool in 2024 was straightforward, especially with the ability to import settings from the previous year. Minor technical issues, such as submission discrepancies, were manageable and did not significantly impact the overall process.