(09-08-24) The new release update is scheduled for 3 pm CET and contains the following:
New releases
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Acai: Reflection Coach
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FeedbackFruits in Spanish
Improvements for all users
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Group Contribution Factor fixes
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Group Formation performance improvements
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Blackboard due dates
New releases
Acai: Reflection Coach
Students often find writing reflections challenging, leading to superficial and less effective outcomes. Our AI-powered Reflection Coach, part of Acai, is here to guide students in this process. This feature provides immediate, personalized guidance and feedback, helping students articulate their thoughts clearly and confidently.
What are the key benefits?
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Personalized feedback: Provides tailored suggestions to enhance student’s writing style.
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Better structured reflections: Helps organize reflections for a coherent and engaging flow.
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Improving critical thinking: Boosts students overall reflection skills with continuous use.
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Ethical AI in education: it is our utmost priority that all our AI solutions safeguard the learner and teacher needs, giving them agency over the AI suggestions, and putting pedagogy before technology.
📚 This functionality leverages AI: see our Acai Coach Transparency Note
How to use it?
To use Acai’s Reflection Coach, the teacher must enable it in the Reflection step in any FeedbackFruits learning activity with Reflection step. Click on ‘Guiding students’ setting, and then click the ‘Reflection Coach’ toggle.
As students write their reflections, FeedbackFruits evaluates these using Large Language Models (through Microsoft Azure) against the predetermined FeedbackFruits reflection instructions (already existing in ‘Reflection Instructions’ text field).
The Coach then provides qualitative suggestions to enhance the reflection being written. The guidance provided to students is only available to them, to provide a safe learning environment.
Why did we create this?
Over the years, teachers have shared the struggles their students face when writing reflections. They want to provide in-the-moment guidance to ensure students gain the most from this crucial learning step. Now, teachers can leverage Acai to coach students anytime, anywhere, making the reflection step approachable, more rewarding and effective.
Where is it available?
The Acai coaching features are currently released as Beta and are only available upon request in all regions. It applies to these FeedbackFruits partnership packages: Get Started, Collaboration & Engagement, Custom Pedagogies (if tools apply), Competency-Based Assessment, and Teaching & Learning System. If you or your institution are interested, please reach out to your FeedbackFruits contact person.
Acai: expanded functionality of Feedback Coach
One of the most difficult aspects of a feedback process is self-evaluation. Students might provide a limited self-assessment, prioritizing giving constructive feedback to others over accurately assessing their own work, which can lead to low-quality or biased self-assessments.
We’ve extended the Acai Feedback Coach to address this. Similar to the coaching students would receive when assessing their peers, now students receive immediate, personalized guidance based on the teacher’s rubric or assessment criteria, ensuring students can properly assess their performance in depth.
What are the key benefits?
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Enhanced Self-Awareness: Helps students develop a deeper understanding of their strengths and areas for improvement, boosting critical thinking.
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Criteria-based feedback: Ensures self-assessments align with the teacher’s rubric or evaluation criteria.
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Ethical AI in education: it is our utmost priority that all our AI solutions safeguard the learner and teacher needs, giving them agency over the AI suggestions, and putting pedagogy before technology.
📚 This functionality leverages AI: see our Acai Coach Transparency Note
How to use it?
To use Acai’s Feedback Coach for self-assessment, the teacher can enable it in the Give Feedback step in Peer Review, Group Member Evaluation, Self-Assessment of Skills/Work, Skill Review and Assignment Review. Click on ‘Guiding students’ setting, and then click the ‘Feedback Coach’ toggle.
As students write their self-assessments, FeedbackFruits leverages Large Language Models through Microsoft Azure to evaluate it against the teacher's reflection instructions. The Coach then provides qualitative suggestions to enhance the feedback being written. The guidance provided to students is only available to them, to provide a safe learning environment.
📚 Read more about how to use Acai: Feedback Coach
Why did we create this?
We’ve received great feedback on our initial Acai Feedback Coach, which was only available when peers are providing feedback to each other. Based on those insights, and given the difficulty can have providing high-quality self-assessments, we’ve extended Acai’s capabilities to also cover this use case.
Where is it available?
The Acai coaching features are currently released as Beta and are only available upon request in all regions. It applies to these FeedbackFruits partnership packages: Get Started, Collaboration & Engagement, Custom Pedagogies (if tools apply), Competency-Based Assessment, and Teaching & Learning System. If you or your institution are interested, please reach out to your FeedbackFruits contact person.
Acai: Discussion Coach for Discussion on Topic
Acai’s Discussion Coach for Discussion on Topic is a novel approach to coach students in writing compelling and well-structured discussion contributions. By analyzing the discussion topic and providing tailored guidance, it helps students to make their responses clear, relevant, and enriched with critical insights.
What are the key benefits?
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Enhanced critical thinking: Encourages deeper analysis and more thoughtful contributions by helping students explore and articulate their ideas more effectively.
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Context-based feedback: Offers customized feedback and suggestions based on the discussion topic, improving the quality and relevance of each reply.
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Ethical AI in education: it is our utmost priority that all our AI solutions safeguard the learner and teacher needs, giving them agency over the AI suggestions, and putting pedagogy before technology.
📚 This functionality leverages AI: see our Acai Coach Transparency Note
How to use it?
To use Acai’s Discussion Coach, the teacher can enable it in the Discussion step in a Discussion on Topic assignment. Click on ‘Guiding students’ setting, and then click the ‘Feedback Coach’ toggle.
As students write their discussion contributions, FeedbackFruits leverages Large Language Models through Microsoft Azure to evaluate it against the provided discussion prompt. The Coach then provides qualitative suggestions to enhance the contribution being written. The guidance provided to students is only available to them, to provide a safe learning environment.
Why did we create this?
Discussion learning activities can greatly contribute to social learning and help students build their critical thinking skills, sharpen perspectivism and argumentation. Helping students improve the quality of their contributions, however, can be a very labor intensive process for educators. With Acai, we are able to provide guidance to students at an unprecedented scale.
Where is it available?
The Acai coaching features are currently released as Beta and are only available upon request in all regions. It applies to these FeedbackFruits partnership packages: Get Started, Collaboration & Engagement, Custom Pedagogies (if tools apply), Competency-Based Assessment, and Teaching & Learning System. If you or your institution are interested, please reach out to your FeedbackFruits contact person.
🇪🇸 FeedbackFruits in Spanish
Hola! We're thrilled to announce that our software is now available in Spanish! As well as in Dutch, French, Icelandic and English, we aim to align with the needs of our partners in Spanish-speaking countries. We are looking forward to providing FeedbackFruits in more languages in the future.
What are the key benefits?
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Enhanced user experience: for non-native English speakers, fostering diversity and accessibility across our user base.
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Language practice: students in language courses can now extend their practice outside of their submissions or interactive content, as their entire FeedbackFruits experience will be in a new language.
How to use it?
To turn it on, both teachers and students can navigate to their Preferences menu (three dots in the top right corner), and then select ’Español’ within the Language preferences. For those who have their browser or operating system preferences set to Spanish, the translation will be selected by default.
Please note that only FeedbackFruits product (interface) will be translated. Thus, the writing provided by teachers and students (for example, comments, submissions, attachments, rubrics) won’t be translated automatically.
Why did we create this?
This new language option ensures a more inclusive and user-friendly experience, further strengthening our commitment to providing tailored solutions for our diverse users, and supporting institutions all over the world.
Where is it available?
This feature is currently released under feature flag and is only available upon request. It applies to all these FeedbackFruits partnership packages: Get Started, Feedback & Assessment, Collaboration & Engagement, Custom Pedagogies, Competency-Based Assessment, and Teaching & Learning System. If you or your institution are interested, please reach out to your FeedbackFruits contact person.
Improvements for all users
Group Contribution Grading improvement
First launched in 2018, the Group Contribution Grading feature helps teachers provide students with an individualize grade based on peer evaluations of group member contributions in a group project.
We have made several bug fixes and quality of life improvements in the feature based on feedback from our partners. It is now more accurate, more consistent, and clearer to use.
Major changes include:
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Remove pre-mature rounding in factor calculations
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Show components and data related to Group Contribution Grading only when it is enabled
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Remove unrelated components when Group Contribution Grading is enabled
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Updated Help Center articles and in-product copies for better readability and comprehensibility
What are the key benefits?
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Higher accuracy in factor calculation
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Clearer and more consistent user experience
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Better guidance for using the feature: the updates to Help Center articles and in-product copies provide better guidance in using the feature. They also now include better instructions and practical examples.
📚 Read the updated help center articles about Group Contribution Grading here:
For a comprehensive list of improvements and changes, please contact your FeedbackFruits Pilot and Partner Success Manager or your main FeedbackFruits contact person.
Where is it available?
These improvements will be automatically available to all users with access to Group Member Evaluation upon release, without the need for additional requests.
This includes: Get Started, Feedback & Assessment, Custom Pedagogies (if applicable), Competency Based Assessment, Teaching & Learning System.
Group Formation improvements
We have improved the performance of Group Formation and added quality of life in Canvas.
Instructors may now choose to name the group set they publish to the LMS. This allow teachers to locate and use the published groups more easily in the LMS.
Additionally, this helps resolve the “0 groups published” issue in Canvas. This error happened when an existing group set shares the same name. Now, when a group set already exists with the same name, the new group set must be renamed before publishing.
What are the key benefits?
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Faster group formation: it is now much faster to form groups within group formation tool, especially in a course with large number of enrollments.
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Better workflow when publishing groups to LMS
Where is it available?
These improvements will be automatically available to all users with access to Group Formation upon release, without the need for additional requests. This includes: Get Started, Feedback & Assessment, Custom Pedagogies (if applicable), Competency Based Assessment, Teaching & Learning System.
Grade Status & Due Dates for Blackboard integration
Grade Status Posting to Gradebook
We are excited to introduce a new feature that allows educators to post grade status directly to the gradebook column within Blackboard. This feature simplifies the grading process by enabling seamless integration between our platform and the Blackboard gradebook. By automating the posting of grades, instructors can save time and reduce the potential for errors, ensuring that students have up-to-date information on their academic performance.
Deadline Synchronization with LMS
Our latest update includes the ability to save the first deadline in a FeedbackFruits activity as the due date within Blackboard. This feature, also available as a feature flag for Blackboard users, ensures that deadlines set within FeedbackFruits are automatically reflected in the LMS. This synchronization helps instructors maintain consistency across platforms, making it easier for students to keep track of their assignments and deadlines. By streamlining this process, educators can enhance their workflow and improve the overall learning experience for their students.
Why did we create this?
We aim to seamlessly integrate into the learning management systems our partners use. Based on feedback from our partners, we identified these features as helping teachers in their communication with students, as well as providing a more holistic overview of course engagement within Blackboard through the gradebook.
Where is it available?
These two features are currently released under feature flag and is only available upon request. If you or your institution are interested, please reach out to your FeedbackFruits contact person.
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This concludes the August Release Notes v2.105. If you have any questions or experience a technical issue, please contact our friendly support team by clicking on the blue chat button
(Note: support is available 24h every weekday & unavailable on the weekend).