Hudson Valley Community College: From frustration to engagement, the need for a change.

Summary

To improve student engagement and address challenges in group work and peer interaction within Brightspace, Elissa Baker and her team at HVCC introduced FeedbackFruits Learning Activities in a campus-wide pilot starting in Spring 2025. The aim was to create collaborative, scaffolded learning experiences that enhance critical thinking, social learning, and accountability among students. The Learning Activities have since supported over 350 assignments and continue to gain traction across departments.

We're seeing deeper interaction and more meaningful engagement. Learning Activities like Group Member Evaluation give both students and faculty a clearer picture of what's happening in group work."

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Context

With the growing demand for online and hybrid education, institutions are increasingly tasked with designing learning experiences that are not only engaging, but also equitable and pedagogically sound. At Hudson Valley Community College (HVCC), this challenge was compounded by the need to support both student collaboration and faculty scalability within the Brightspace LMS.

Rather than accept the limitations of their learning environment, HVCC’s Distance and Online Learning team took a proactive approach. Led by Elissa Baker, the college launched a pilot initiative with FeedbackFruits to explore new, research-backed ways to foster peer-to-peer interaction and engagement across a range of disciplines.

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From frustration to engagement: The need for a change

As online enrollment increased, HVCC faced a common set of challenges:

• Low student engagement with asynchronous learning materials
• Difficulty designing and managing collaborative learning experiences at scale
• Faculty fatigue from repetitive course builds and complex group coordination
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We needed something easy to implement that still created the engagement we wanted, and FeedbackFruits gave us just that.”
— Elissa Baker, Director for Distance and Online Learning at HVCC

The team aimed to build active, student-centered learning environments using collaborative Learning Activities that could integrate directly into Brightspace.

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Implementation strategy

The pilot began with a focus on four key FeedbackFruits Learning Activities:

• Group Formation: to create diverse, balanced teams
• Interactive Document: to increase pre-class preparation and peer interaction
• Team-Based Learning (TBL): to scaffold critical thinking and group discussion
• Group Member Evaluation: to support accountability and formative peer feedback

Courses involved in the pilot included Psychology, English Composition, Computer Science, Art History, Sociology and Statistical Psychology. The instructional designers worked closely with faculty to scaffold activities around learning objectives like collaboration, reflection, and applied analysis.

We're seeing deeper interaction and more meaningful engagement. Learning Activities like Group Member Evaluation give both students and faculty a clearer picture of what's happening in group work.”
— Elissa Baker, Director for Distance and Online Learning at HVCC

Activity highlights

Strategic Group Formation

Faculty used custom criteria like time availability, strengths, pronouns, and work styles to create diverse, functional teams.

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We didn’t expect Group Formation to be the star Learning Activities, but it became a key part of some instructors’ workflows.”
— Elissa Baker, Director for Distance and Online Learning at HVCC

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Active reading with Interactive Document

Instead of passively reading documents, students now learn actively and retain more information by answering questions embedded in the document. Instructors are also able to spot knowledge gaps, thanks to the analytics offered by the learning activity.

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We replaced passive quizzes with interactive discussions that showed where students really struggled.”

Instructors noticed that when students engage with the reading, they participate more confidently in class.”
— Elissa Baker, Director for Distance and Online Learning at HVCC

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Deepening understanding through Team-Based Learning

TBL exercises combined individual and team quizzes (iRAT and tRAT), encouraging students to debate answers and close knowledge gaps together.

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Supporting instructors in creative teaching: Instead of merely delivering lectures, educators can use AI to create interactive learning experiences, allowing them to act as facilitators rather than content dispensers.

The difference was clear: a student scoring 50% alone could reach over 90% with the team. That’s the power of discussion.”

Faculty who were already using scratch cards loved seeing this digitized with easier grading and real-time feedback.
— Elissa Baker, Director for Distance and Online Learning at HVCC

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Peer accountability via Group Member Evaluation

Students rated each other on collaboration and contribution. An AI feedback coach supported them in crafting more constructive, specific feedback. Instructors are also able to individualize student grades thanks to FeedbackFruits' Group Contribution Grading, ensuring students' contributions in the team are reflected fairly in the final grade.

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Adding the AI feedback coach nudged students to give better comments. I actually saw their writing improve.”

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This Learning Activity helped us move from frustration over free-riding to more transparency and fairness in grading.”
— Elissa Baker, Director for Distance and Online Learning at HVCC

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Towards a long-term partnership: Adopting FeedbackFruits across departments

The FeedbackFruits pilot has helped HVCC reframe collaborative learning not as a burden, but as an opportunity to support deeper thinking, fairer assessment, and student agency.

You can’t just go back to 3-hour lectures and multiple-choice exams. Collaborative learning is the future.”

Encouraged by faculty response and the ease of LMS integration, HVCC plans to continue expanding its use of FeedbackFruits Learning Activities across departments.