Eli Review’s mission is to change the conversation about peer learning. We want to help teachers provide students more and better formative feedback by giving them greater visibility into the work students are doing as writers and reviewers.
Since November 2014, we have released four free professional development resources designed to help instructors understand why feedback and revision are the most powerful ways to move the needle on student learning:
- Feedback and Revision: The Components of Powerful Writing Pedagogy
- Designing Effective Reviews: Helping Students Give Helpful Feedback
- Teaching Revision: Helping Students Rethink Their Writing
- Evidence-Based Teaching: Formative Feedback and Writing Instruction
These resources show that Eli has a pedagogy grounded in widely-shared beliefs about the writing process, collaboration, and coaching.
Such beliefs are not always shared by students whose experiences with peer learning may have been unsatisfactory. The gap between students’ beliefs and instructors’ beliefs can be the elephant in the room. It can keep well-designed tasks from succeeding.
We are thrilled to release two free student resources to address that gap and bring students into a conversation about peer learning:
- Feedback and Improvement: Becoming a Better Writer by Helping Other Writers
- Rethinking and Revising: Using Feedback to Improve Our Writing
These quick reads give students ways to talk about their assumptions and apprehensions related to giving and getting feedback. By bringing these attitudes and fears into the foreground, we hope instructors can have on-going conversations with students about peer learning.
We’ve also heard students get comfortable with Eli quickly, usually after completing two projects. When they start the third project, they no longer have to think about what to do in Eli and can focus all their time and energy on the writing projects instructors have designed. So, we’ve designed a curriculum with two think-pair-share activities that combine WHY with HOW:
- The first project asks students to read Feedback and Improvement and write a short reaction paper. Then, they review their reaction papers, and the review analytics can help shape class discussion. They practice building a revision plan by telling instructors what they learned from reading, writing, reviewing, and discussing the importance of feedback.
- The same sequence of activities is available for Rethinking and Revising, a reading about the time, skills, and growth mindset needed for revision.
Using our Framing Feedback and Revision curriculum makes sure that students are comfortable with Eli’s interface and approach before they start working on projects you’ve designed.
All of our materials are shared under a Creative Commons license, and you may customize any task downloaded from the curriculum inside Eli Review.
We hope these resources raise instructors’ and students’ expectations for better feedback, better revision, better writers.
