FeedbackFruits 2021 Wrapped: A year in review
It’s that time of year when we take a look back on 2021 and realise just what a journey it has been throughout the past 12 months.
As we wrap up another year of the pandemic, it is clear that the higher education we knew will not return. Such change is believed to open the opportunity for real educational transformation: achieving the “higher education we deserve”.
The “higher education we deserve”, according to university leaders, refers to an environment where students are the knowledge owners, instructors become the facilitators, while faculties remain agile and flexible to any changes need. Most importantly, pedagogical technology is seen as a key driver behind positive educational shifts.
The ultimate aim is an institution with a technology-enabled, sustainable business model that has redefined ‘the campus’, operates efficiently, and anticipates and addresses major new risks.
At FeedbackFruits, we believe in the role of technology in supporting educators achieving the “higher education we deserve”. That’s why we’ve been working harder than ever throughout 2021 to upgrade our innovative solutions and scale up their impact. And did our efforts pay off?
To answer that, let us walk you through FeedbackFruits’ journey in 2021: How it started and where we are now, what we worked on, and what we achieved…
FeedbackFruits has been growing stronger than ever
Over the past 12 months, we witnessed an incredible growth in our active users and learning activities created:
- 135% increase of teachers and students actively using our tools in their courses
- The number of learning activities created with our tools rose by more than twice (154%) compared to the end of 2020
FeedbackFruits Tool Suite has reached 77 institutions around the world, with 26 in the Netherlands, 13 in Europe, 13 in Australia, and 26 in the US, where it was adopted to create more than 2 million courses (online, hybrid or hyflex).
Read more:
Infographic: Enhance student engagement at 7 institutions with FeedbackFruits
We continued to extend our efforts to support institutions innovating in teaching and learning
Over the past years, we’ve been collaborating closely with faculties worldwide in innovating the learning experience of thousands of students. This year, we could see the fruits of this continuous hard work as FeedbackFruits entered long-term partnerships with several renowned institutions from all corners of the world: from Central Michigan University and Texas Tech University in the US, Monash University and Queensland University of Technology in Australia, to EDHEC Business School and HEC Paris in Europe.
Our tool suite has also grown bigger and better this year
This year has been extremely fruitful for us, as our collaboration with partner institutions under the Edtech Dotank resulted in the launch of 2 new tools.
Together with IE Business School, we developed and co-created the Team Based Learning tool: helping you improve student engagement in two stages of team-based learning activities (iRAT and tRAT), and saving instructors time and headaches while setting up.
Read more: Team Based Learning - Maximize the positive effect with pedagogical technology
Creating and formulating in-class quizzes is easy; however, it is much more challenging in an online context. That’s why FeedbackFruits collaborated with MITx to develop the Quiz tool, helping teachers optimize the online testing experience.
Other than introducing Team-Based Learning and Quiz, our team also put lots of effort into upgrading our current solutions with new functionalities to help instructors optimize their course design. For example, with our Comprehension tool, it is now possible to make use of videos, audio, and image files in the same way as documents.
Read more on our tool updates.
We doubled down on our efforts to build and strengthen a community of innovative educators
We kickstarted the year with our 2nd webinar with Microsoft, which discussed how instructors can leverage FeedbackFruits Tool Suite to elevate course design within Microsoft Teams.
FeedbackFruits’ first virtual event, inspirED 2021, brought together the true innovators within higher education to discuss and exchange their research and best practices to cultivate scalable, sustainable education. Our hope is that this experience sparks inspiration and motivation for educators everywhere in the transition towards the “new normal” after COVID-19.
May 2021 also marked our webinar on “How to facilitate effective group work at business schools'', featuring Mustafa Elsawy (Learning Technologist at Georgia State University) and Jeff Webb (Associate Professor at David Eccles School of Business in University of Utah). This was a wonderful discussion on different areas of group work facilitation such as free-riding, student engagement, and peer feedback delivery.
And to end the year, we sat back with Kaja Sinead Selvik (Enterprise Channel Manager at Microsoft), and John David Baird (Educational Developer at Reykjavik University) for an in-depth discussion on how FeedbackFruits tools enhance learning in Canvas and Microsoft Teams through data insights and a case study.
Check out our webinar recap for 8 crucial takeaways from innovating group assessment.
We’ve been more productive than ever in producing resources for educators
Besides developing tools to support teachers and instructors, we have been creating content as informative input for teachers when designing online courses. We published our first article in 2016, but it is not until this year that we became more productive in content creation. In total, we have published 21 use cases featuring success stories of institutions worldwide, in-depth blog series on different pedagogical topics, and 4 ebooks discussing feedback, course design, and peer assessment. We also launched The Learning Experience Lab podcast, which so far has seen 15 episodes released. Below you can find some of our most outstanding content:
1. Ebook: Feedback for learning: A comprehensive guide
2. Use cases:
Institution-wide scalability and transparency in peer assessments at Deakin University
How Boston University enhanced peer feedback and engagement in a large online course
3. Blogs
How to create effective peer feedback criteria
4. Podcasts:
#4: Feedback Practices in Instructional Design with John McCormick
#14: The power of Automated Feedback with Joost Verdoorn
And we received acknowledgement for our hard work
FeedbackFruits was nominated in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 competition as among the fastest-growing technology companies. Being able to initiate our impact-driven approach through collaboration with universities to bring their learning design forward, while being recognized as one of the fastest growing (yet bootstrapped) Dutch edtech scale-ups is something we’re really proud of.
Alongside 8 other Dutch scale-ups, we were included in Techleapnl's Rise Program, Batch #6. We’re grateful and encouraged that Techleap recognises and supports our international growth, increasing our ability to scale our impact in education and bring the technology of learning design out of the stone age.
Starting the year with a nomination, and ending the year with two awards. FeedbackFruits was also humbled to win the Gold and the Silver Award at the Reimagine Education Awards 2021. FeedbackFruits was selected from over 1100 submissions as a multiple winner of the Reimagine Education Awards 2021, across two categories. The Dutch EdTech scale-up won the Gold Award in the 'E-Learning' category for the active learning Tool Suite, and the Silver Award in the 'Artificial Intelligence' category for the Automated Feedback tool.
Looking forward to 2022
These recognitions have been a tremendous motivation for us to reflect on our journey and remain focused on accelerating the active learning movement even further!
If one thing has been clear, it’s that the FeedbackFruits team couldn’t have gone this far without the support and trust of many educators, who remained fearless, level-headed, and inspirational throughout this changing time.
We want to send our deepest gratitude to all the people working in higher education, whose efforts have been relentless in sustaining an effective learning environment for everybody.
We wish you all a relaxing, safe holiday season and New Year, and we’ll see you again in 2022 with refreshed readiness to strive for the “higher education we deserve”!
From the FeedbackFruits team with love!
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