The challenge

AUG's ambition to become a digitally native institution was running into practical obstacles on two fronts: the student experience, and faculty adoption.

On the student side, the missing ingredient was structured active engagement. Students were consuming content passively, with limited opportunities for peer interaction or applied practice. Where feedback existed, it was delayed: existing tools like VoiceThread required instructors to respond to submissions manually and rebuild activities from scratch every term, creating more work for faculty and delivering less for students.

On the faculty side, adoption of digital tools remained low compared to global standards and traditional training sessions were not moving the needle. With 5,500 students and hundreds of courses per year, the team needed tools convenient enough for faculty to genuinely embrace and scalable enough to be embedded into course design from the start.

"We thought that [FeedbackFruits] would enhance the learning experience of our students both in the campus-based and online courses. But at the same time… will help our faculty also get on the bandwagon of technology-enhanced learning
‍Dr. Konstantinos Samiotis, Director, Online Education Hub

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Implementation & activity design

AUG's approach to implementation centres on course production as a collaborative process. Konstantinos and the instructional design team work closely with subject matter experts and faculty to design courses from the ground up, with FeedbackFruits activities built in from the start rather than added later. This means faculty are involved in shaping how the tools are used in their courses, and the activities are ready to go the moment a course goes live.

The results of this approach are already visible in the numbers. By late 2025, AUG had 28 active activities using FeedbackFruits Interactive Document and Comprehension running across 8 course, with over 550 enrolled students.

" We are actively preparing and building with FeedbackFruits, and there’s a strong sense of enthusiasm around it within our team. Throughout our course production process, we continuously refine and adapt its use to meet evolving needs—often on a weekly basis.”"
Vasileios Karamanis, Instructional Designer

The following activities illustrate how AUG's team has been using FeedbackFruits across a range of courses and pedagogical contexts. 

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Activity 1: Article & reading discussions

Learning activity‍
Interactive Document

Objective
Deepen comprehension of assigned readings through structured discussion and personal reflection

Activity design
‍Vasileios and his colleagues share an article or a section of a reading directly within the Interactive Document. Alongside the content, they embed a mix of open and closed comprehension questions and reflection prompts, asking students to engage with specific arguments, analyze the material, and share their own perspectives or experiences in relation to the text.

‍Results:

• Students engage actively with assigned readings rather than consuming them passively
• Reflection prompts support deeper processing of course material and encourage students to connect theory to their own experience

See it in practice: Vasileios Karamanis contributed a template to the FeedbackFruits Learning Design Community - a free, open library of educator-created learning activity templates that puts this approach directly into practice.

Exploring technology-enhanced learning through Interactive Document uses a scenario-based consulting format to help students explore active learning principles and reflect on how technology-enhanced teaching could improve their own practice. Just as AUG uses the Interactive Document to layer comprehension questions and reflection prompts over course content, this template models the same structure around a relatable teaching scenario.

How it works:

• Students read activity guidelines and learning objectives
• They open the Interactive Document and work through multiple-choice questions about the teaching approach of a hypothetical colleague, "Professor Garcia", applying active learning and technology-enhanced teaching principles
• A final reflection step asks students to consider how the principles they explored could be applied to improve their own teaching practice

Take a closer look at our learning activity

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Activity 2: Scenario-based learning

Learning activity
Interactive Document

Objective
‍Build real-world decision-making skills through immersive, consequence-driven scenarios

Activity design
‍The team builds custom scenarios from scratch using PowerPoint or PDF files uploaded into the Interactive Document. Students are placed in a role, for example as a consultant navigating a professional dilemma, and presented with multiple-choice decisions. Rather than marking answers as simply right or wrong, the activity uses an "action and reaction" model: students see the consequence of their choice before being prompted to reflect. Reflection prompts are embedded after every few questions to help students digest what they have experienced and consolidate their learning.

"We intentionally avoid framing decisions as simply right or wrong, because real-life situations are rarely that clear-cut. Instead, we follow an action–reaction approach: learners make a choice, observe its consequences, and receive feedback. This process helps them understand not just what works, but why."
Ioulita Angelopoulou, Instructional Designer

Results:

• Students engage with material at a deeper level through applied, realistic problem-solving
• The reflective structure encourages students to pause, process, and articulate their thinking supporting transfer of learning

See it in practice: Ioulita Angelopoulou also contributed two templates to the FeedbackFruits Learning Design Community, both built around this scenario-based approach using the Interactive Document:

Stepping into a manager’s shoes with Interactive Document places students in a manager’s role across five real-world decision-making scenarios, asking them to identify decision types, justify their reasoning, and reflect on how uncertainty shaped their choices. It is a direct example of the action-and-reaction format AUG applies in its own scenario-based activities.

How it works:

• Students read the activity instructions, which walk through different decision types and conditions
• They work through five scenarios with embedded questions, locked sequentially so each must be completed before moving on
• Once submitted, students see peers’ answers anonymously and reflect on the group’s responses

Take a closer look at our learning activity

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Activity 3: Video annotation

Learning activity
Comprehension Tool

Objective
Transform passive video watching into an active analytical exercise

Activity design
‍The team uses the Comprehension tool to layer active tasks onto video content. Rather than simply watching a lecture or expert talk, students are asked to annotate specific moments identifying key arguments, evaluating advantages and disadvantages, flagging important concepts, or responding to questions tied to particular timestamps. The exact annotation prompts are designed around the learning goal of each specific activity.

"While videos are inherently engaging, they can still be a passive experience. To address this, we ask students to actively engage by annotating specific elements (highlighting key arguments, evaluating advantages and disadvantages, or identifying important concepts) depending on the learning objectives of each activity."
Ioulita Angelopoulou, Instructional Designer

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Activity 4: Group project collaboration space (Online MBA)

Learning activity
Interactive Document, Group Formation

Objective
‍Support structured, collaborative group project work in a fully asynchronous online MBA program

Program
Fully online, asynchronous MBA  -  100+ students per term

Modality
100% online, asynchronous

Activity design
‍AUG’s online MBA is a fully asynchronous program  -  one of relatively few of its kind in Europe  -  designed for working professionals who need to balance study with careers. The program runs over seven weeks, with students assessed through a group project that begins on day one. Sustaining meaningful collaboration between students who never meet in person, across different time zones and schedules, is one of the defining challenges of this format.

To address this, the team used the Interactive Document as a shared, private group workspace. The assignment brief was embedded directly into the document, divided into weekly steps, and groups worked within it throughout the course. Students highlighted sections of the brief, shared ideas as discussion comments, uploaded documents, and replied to each other’s contributions  -  using the tool for both idea generation and task prioritization. Group Formation was used to organize students into teams, and peer evaluation supported structured end-of-project team reflection.

" Given that we currently work with two core tools, we’re constantly exploring creative ways to apply them. In this case, we used the Interactive Document as a collaborative workspace for a group project. Students engaged through discussions and replies, and in many instances, they expressed how valuable it was to have a shared space that supported their teamwork."
Vasileios Karamanis, Instructional Designer

Results:

• Asynchronous student teams had a structured, centralized workspace that kept collaboration visible and on track without requiring synchronous meetings
• Groups that actively used the tool showed notably tighter grade clustering (see Outcomes section), suggesting stronger team alignment and accountability
• Demonstrated that FeedbackFruits can support the full complexity of online, asynchronous group work, not just individual learning activities

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Activity 5: Refreshing course material engagement

Learning activity
Interactive Document (replacing VoiceThread)

Objective
Replace time-consuming, inflexible legacy activities with reusable, automatically-graded alternatives

Activity design
‍One instructor had been posing questions around course materials, but the workflow was cumbersome: submissions required manual responses and the activity had to be rebuilt from scratch each term.

Migrating into the Interactive Document allowed the team to embed multiple-choice and open-ended questions with automatic feedback, including suggested answers for open-ended responses. Existing presentations and slides from the previous tool were repurposed directly as document content.

"We moved away from a process that relied heavily on manual responses and rebuilt the activity in a way that is both scalable and sustainable. Students now receive immediate, structured feedback, and faculty can easily reuse and adapt the activity across terms."
Lara Bachmann - Tampouratzis, Instructional Designer

Results:

• Students receive immediate, structured feedback rather than waiting for instructor responses
• Faculty can create templates and reuse activities across terms, saving significant time
• Student response was immediate: those who experienced the activity asked why similar tools were not being used in their other courses

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Outcomes & impact

AUG's instructional design team has already observed meaningful patterns particularly from the MBA group project use case, where grade data was available for comparison.

Student performance

Konstantinos and his team compared the grades of student groups that used FeedbackFruits against those who chose not to. The results were striking: students who used the tools scored consistently between 82 and 90 out of 100, while non-users showed a much wider spread, ranging anywhere from 50 to 90.

According to Konstantinos, the grades of students who used FeedbackFruits were gathered in a very high range, between 82 and 90 out of 100, while those who did not were all over the place. His conclusion: the use of such a tool can really secure student performance, by tightening the relationships between team members and ensuring that everybody knows what the others are doing.
Dr. Konstantinos Samiotis, Director, Online Education Hub

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Faculty confidence & efficiency

Beyond student performance, FeedbackFruits has provided faculty with something equally valuable: confidence. Instructors now have visibility into what students are engaging with and how, and the template reusability feature means activities built once can be deployed across terms without rebuilding.

"Instead of a faculty member not knowing what students are doing, he now has some confidence that he has implemented a tool that students can actually take advantage of and keep track of their progress."
Dr. Konstantinos Samiotis, Director, Online Education Hub

Student engagement signals

The impact on student motivation has also come through organically. Following the VoiceThread migration, students who encountered the new Interactive Document activities in one course asked why the same approach was not being used elsewhere.

"We have testimonials from students that they saw this activity in a course, and they were wondering why you don’t make it to other courses as well. This is maybe an indication that students are more engaged, more motivated."
Lara Bachmann - Tampouratzis, Instructional Designer

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