Eli Review seeks to make it easy for instructors to promote a strong feedback culture so that students give, receive, and use helpful feedback during peer learning.
Origins of Eli Review
Eli Review (also known simply as “Eli” and pronounced EE-lie) was invented to support evidence-based teaching practices and facilitate rich peer learning environments. Invented in writing classrooms at Michigan State University, Eli became necessary because no technologies existed to support the feedback and revision cycles that lead to better learning and more effective writers. Now, 15 years later, there are more options available to learners and teachers, but very few that are evidence-based and that structure proven ways of teaching.
Eli was invented by Jeff Grabill, Bill Hart-Davidson, and Mike McLeod, all faculty at the time in the Writing, Rhetoric, & American Cultures department at Michigan State University and researchers in the Writing in Digital Environments Research Center.
For additional detail on the origins, see the original whitepaper for more on the concepts, assumptions, and theories behind Eli Review.
Development Team
Bill Hart-Davidson was Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies and Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures (WRAC) when he passed away suddenly and tragically on April 23, 2024, at 53 years old.
Bill taught various forms of writing, user-experience design, and research, earned a Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1999 and spent time at IBM and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before coming to MSU in 2004.
Bill worked closely with Mike and Jeff to guide Eli’s development and ensure consistency with trustworthy learning theory and good writing pedagogy from the inside out. He was frequently found at the whiteboard sketching flow diagrams at a furious pace or in front of a group of teachers helping them reimagine their classrooms as dynamic peer-learning spaces using Eli. We miss him terribly.
Jeff Grabill is the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Education at the University of Leeds, where he leads the University’s overall education strategy. Prior to Leeds, he was a faculty member and the Associate Provost for Teaching, Learning, and Technology at Michigan State University. While at MSU, Grabill was a professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures department at Michigan State University. He helped found and direct the WIDE (Writing in Digital Environments) Research Center, which has produced several technologies for learning, including Eli.
Grabill has more than 25 years of experience in higher education, including experience leading and supporting: strategic planning and budgeting; enrollment strategy and planning; academic and educational innovation; student success; IT and digital transformation; online education; entrepreneurship and intellectual property development; culture and community-building with staff and students.
Mike McLeod is a graduate of the Rhetoric and Writing program at Michigan State. Having completed both of its MA programs (Critical Studies in Literacy and Pedagogy as well as Digital Rhetoric and Professional Writing), he was well prepared as both a teacher and a user-centered designer. Jeff and Bill recruited him right out of the degree program to work with them at the WIDE Center, where he led the R&D process for many projects, including the one that eventually became Eli. The three of them collaborated on designs and Mike built and maintained the first Eli prototypes, lovingly referred to as the “MacGuyver Code” versions. Until May 2019, Mike was Eli’s head of product, responsible for design, development, maintenance, and support.
Research & Development
Eli is actively developed by Drawbridge, Inc, an educational technology company founded in East Lansing, MI, that seeks to make ideas into great technologies that enhance teaching and facilitate learning. Drawbridge is a company spun out of Michigan State University.
See our Research site for more information about the theories on which Eli was built and to learn about possibilities for partnering with Eli Review to advance that scholarship.
