Arkansas’ top-ranked regional university (U.S. News Best Colleges, 2019), John Brown University (JBU), enrolls more than 2,100 students from 38 states and 53 countries in its traditional undergraduate, graduate, online, and concurrent education programs. JBU offers more than 40 majors, with top programs in engineering, nursing, family and human services, biology, graphic design, and construction management.
Dr. Kim Johnson is a dedicated educator passionate about fostering active learning in higher education. With a wealth of experience as an instructional designer and expertise in educational technology, she is committed to creating dynamic and interactive learning environments that empower students to thrive.
Arkansas’ top-ranked regional university (U.S. News Best Colleges, 2019), John Brown University (JBU), enrolls more than 2,100 students from 38 states and 53 countries in its traditional undergraduate, graduate, online, and concurrent education programs. JBU offers more than 40 majors, with top programs in engineering, nursing, family and human services, biology, graphic design, and construction management.
Dr. Kim Johnson is a dedicated educator passionate about fostering active learning in higher education. With a wealth of experience as an instructional designer and expertise in educational technology, she is committed to creating dynamic and interactive learning environments that empower students to thrive.
John Brown University faced challenges in implementing active learning due to time constraints, limited resources, and engagement across modalities. To address this, they adopted FeedbackFruits to help streamline multi-layer feedback and assessment. Key activities included peer review, multi-layer feedback, and group evaluations, enhancing student engagement, critical thinking, and teacher efficiency.
The John Brown University (JBU) team has been implementing active learning design to provide an authentic education that stimulates engagement, skill transfer, and improved academic performance.
Read more about active learning: https://feedbackfruits.com/blog/what-is-active-learning
However, implementing active learning can sometimes be a hassle for the JBU team. Preparing for active learning exercises requires more effort and time, and there are insufficient support resources and budget. Another challenge is maintaining engagement and interaction across different modalities (hybrid, online, in-person).
To address these challenges, the JBU team adopted FeedbackFruits solutions to help them implement and scale effective active learning design across the faculties.
The JBU team utilized different FeedbackFruits tools to design and implement several active learning strategies such as multi-layer feedback/assessment and group projects.
The upcoming section will share how the JBU team used FeedbackFruits to design different active learning activities:
Courses: Language Studies, Engineering
Objective: Submit assignments and give and receive quality formative feedback.
Tool: FeedbackFruits Peer Review
Activity design:
Using FeedbackFruits Peer Review, the teacher designed the feedback activity with submission requirements and a detailed rubric based on the available templates. After students submitted their work (video or literature review), they first completed a self-assessment using the given rubric and then engaged in the peer review component.
The AI Feedback Coach feature was also enabled, which provided tips and suggestions for students when delivering feedback.
Results:
Using Peer Review made it much easier for teachers to create a streamlined feedback process with different steps and rubrics.
By conducting both a self and peer assessment, students can practice and develop critical thinking skills. Furthermore, they also learned how to deliver constructive, quality feedback thanks to the guidance from the AI Feedback Coach enabled in the activity.
The self and peer feedback also allowed students to reflect on their work and make improvements to their final submission.
Course: Critical Concerns with Adolescence
Objective: Submit drafts for formative feedback to submit high-quality research papers.
Tool: FeedbackFruits Automated Feedback, Peer Review, Assignment Review
Activity design:
This is a learning journey containing different activities supported by several FeedbackFruits tools.
Students worked on their first drafts and then submitted them to Automated Feedback, where they received AI feedback on technical writing aspects like grammar, vocabulary, citation, etc. Based on the AI feedback, students revise their drafts.
They submitted the second drafts to Peer Review, where they conducted self and peer assessments based on a given rubric. AI Feedback Coach was enabled to support students in giving constructive, quality feedback.
After improving the paper using self and peer feedback, students submitted their final work to the Assignment Review tool to receive feedback and grading from teachers.
Results:
Students received timely, consistent support throughout the activity thanks to the AI Automated Feedback and Feedback Coach feature.
Teachers can spend more time focusing on higher-order thinking skills of the written work (argumentation, reasoning), instead of having to check for grammar or citation errors.
Received AI feedback on grammar & conventions, and the opportunity to make improvements in the draft before submitting it to a peer.
Courses & Departments: Intro to Game Design, Business, Construction Management
Objective: Evaluate group member participation
Tool: FeedbackFruits Group Member Evaluation
Activity design:
Conduct a self-assessment of participation in the group assignment and evaluate the participation of each group member according to rubric criteria.
Results:
Again, the Group Member Evaluation was easy and quick to set up, allowing the teacher to design and facilitate a group assessment activity with the self-assessment component.
Real-time data insights into students' review process allow teachers to get insight into the level of participation and identify who is underperforming compared to their team members.
By leveraging FeedbackFruits, John Brown University successfully tackled the challenges of active learning and made feedback and assessment more efficient. The AI-supported tools enhanced student engagement, critical thinking, and collaboration across various courses. Teachers benefited from automated support, allowing them to focus on higher-order skills. These innovations streamlined the learning process, fostering deeper student reflection and improvement. JBU’s experience highlights the impact of technology in scaling effective active learning strategies.
Learn how John Brown University adopted active learning strategies to enhance feedback skills and critical thinking
Learn how John Brown University adopted active learning strategies to engage students with study materials
The University of Arizona utilized student-centric approach and FeedbackFruits solutions to ensure compliance with the Quality Matter Standards
We gather the most valuable resources and learnings on pedagogy and email them to you every month.
.png){kind=small}
