ASU faculty can register to learn more:
Friday, Sept. 27, 11 AM-12 PM Arizona (requires free registration)
This session showcases Eli Review courses at ASU so that instructors can:
- see how the app works
- learn how to get started in Fall B 2019 or Spring 2020.
What is Eli Review?
Eli Review (elireview.com) is a peer review and revision technology that encourages students to reflect on the feedback they receive. A decade ago, writing professors Jeff Grabill, Bill Hart-Davidson, and their colleagues at Michigan State were frustrated by a lack of support for managing the workload for assigning frequent writing practice, especially in short terms. They built Eli Review to enact writing and learning theory:
Students learn to write from other writers while giving, receiving, and using criteria-based feedback in a teacher-led, scaffolded writing process.
The Eli Review team designed the app to facilitate evidence-based teaching in courses with 15 or 500+ students such that engagement data reveals trends about writing quality, highlights successful student work, and identifies struggling students. Eli users report clearer understanding of assignments, greater satisfaction with peer review, and lower DFW/DEW rates. Eli improves learning by making it faster and easier for teachers in any discipline to guide students in giving better feedback, doing better revisions, and becoming better writers.
Why try Eli Review at ASU?
Students report more satisfaction and greater willingness to revise. At the end of Spring B and Summer terms, students using Eli Review and students using another method of peer reviewer completed a survey. As expected, students bring low expectations from past peer review expectations. Compared to students who used methods like discussion boards or Canvas peer review, students reported that Eli Review was was more helpful.
More importantly, students using Eli Review indicated that they were much more willing to revise than students using other peer review methods.
One student noted:
I think we got better and better at doing peer reviews through Eli. It would have been nice if the was a program wide tool so that we could stumble through the first course and then be really effective for the rest of the courses. Eli Review made me a better writer. I was able to see how I came across to the reader. Also, it made me feel connected to my classmates which is something I haven’t felt in this program.
TWC student in Spring B at ASU
Instructors agree. Instructors who used an Eli Review course shell customized for their course and program report satisfaction with teaching peer feedback and revision in the app.
Honestly, my experience was positive, and based on my student feedback, the class felt Eli Review was worthwhile and helped them improve their writing. Perhaps one of the best learning outcomes was how the peer review process actually gave many of the students renewed “confidence” to give and receive feedback. Some of them also commented on how they learned something new about themselves (i.e., style, tone, voice) that they were not presently aware of when they began the process.
As far as ASU faculty benefits are concerned, I would have to say that Eli Review is easy to install, execute and implement within an existing course shell. Eli Review also allows you to customize the peer review process with as few or as many assignments as you so choose. Eli Review encourages students to seek ownership for their writing; which gives instructors more time to “coach” deeper skills from a higher perspective.
A course shell makes it easy. Beginning in Summer B 2019, all sections of TWC361 Writing for Healthcare Management and TWC362 Writing in the Health Professions have assigned 4-5 write-review-revise cycles in the 7.5 week terms. Course coordinator Barbara D’Angelo clones a course shell for all instructors that is pre-populated with write-review-revise cycles aligned to the course syllabus. Instructors assign tasks, form groups, and use analytics to follow-up with struggling students.
The Eli Review team is happy to work with course administrators on designing a sequence of write-review-revise cycles that can be shared across sections.
And, you won’t be the first users. ASU faculty in Technical and Professional Writing have used Eli Review since Spring 2018. Read about Barbara D’Angelo’s online master’s course for technical writers.
Beyond ASU, Eli Review is used by 65+ institutions and 13,000 students each term.
What is Eli Review’s relationship with ASU?
Eli Review is part of ASU’s Scale U Functional Higher EdTech Accelerator.
