This course introduced 200 first-year students to the foundational elements of public administration theory, over the course of 8 weeks. It focused on equipping learners with the necessary academic skills, such as reading, conducting research and writing legislative policy, but also interpersonal skills such as planning and carrying out interviews.
As another course which would normally have been given face-to-face but has had to be reformatted for a remote setup, the instructor sought to maintain students’ ability to view and respond to each other’s work. Consequently, Peer Review was used to allow students to upload recorded presentations and give feedback to each other digitally. This proved not only an effective replacement of the in-class presentation format, but also saved time for the instructor and students.
This course saw students tackle a societal problem (e.g. poverty) through a structured investigation, pitching of ideas, and production of a final report summarising their findings. 17 groups of 12 students took part in this course, each being individually responsible for their investigation and the presentation of their findings. First, students had to think of a subject and elaborate on it by looking at literature and situating it within a policy domain. In week 4, halfway through the course, students record a short video of themselves pitching their ideas and planning so far, uploading this video to Peer Review. They then viewed the pitches of three randomly assigned peers and gave feedback comments, mentioning something that was done well and something that could be improved upon.
This activity was not graded as it was a formative exercise to ensure students’ understanding of the course before iterating on their final deliverable, which was worth 100% of the overall grade.
"I think if we ever go back to ‘normal’ teaching, I would prefer to keep the FeedbackFruits activity over the in-class pitches!" - Agnes van den Andel, Lecturer, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
Despite having to set up the tools for the first time in stressful, time-limited circumstances, the instructor was still able to design an effective and successful activity thanks to FeedbackFruits’ intuitive interface and quick-responding support team. Both students and the instructor saved time thanks to using Peer Review in this manner.
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