Introduction

In this article we'll walk you through how to set up Skill Review from the perspective of a teacher. Skill Review lets you mentor your students with feedback on their skills — the teacher reviews each student (or group) against your criteria.

If you'd like more information on how this tool works, check out these articles:

• Skill Review: For Teachers (Active Assignment)

• Skill Review: For Students

• Skill Review: Overview

Tool In Action

How this article is structured

Setting up an activity now follows three stages, shown in the bar at the top of the activity whenever you're in edit mode:

1. Build activity — get an overview of your activity and add or remove steps.
2. Edit steps — configure each step one at a time (instructions, the feedback you give, who you give it to, and feedback visibility).
3. Setup activity — set what applies to the whole activity: deadlines, grade weighting, and groups.

This article follows that same order. Everything below describes what you can configure before the activity is published — students cannot access the activity at this stage. You can still edit some settings after publishing; however, once students start making progress, certain options lock to protect their work and data. Wherever that applies, we'll note it.

Note: When you open a published activity, you'll land on the Active Assignment view by default. To return to setup, click Edit in the upper-left corner. See the Active Assignment article.

Accessibility

We're devoted to making our tools as accessible as possible for all learners. To read more, see Accessibility: Within FeedbackFruits Tools.

Stage 1 — Build activity

This is your starting point. Here you see every step in the activity in order and can shape the activity before configuring the detail.

A default Skill Review activity contains:

1. Instructions
2. Feedback by teacher
3. Read received feedback 

Adding steps. Use the learning-steps panel to add optional steps such as a Reflection or a Non-FeedbackFruits step. Click a step to add it, or drag it into the activity. 

When your steps are in place, move to Edit steps to configure each one.

Stage 2 — Edit steps

Here you set up the activity step by step. Each step shows its own settings and a Student preview so you can see what learners will see. Collaboration settings live on hand in step they affect, so it's clear what each choice applies to.

Step 1: Instructions

Write the instructions students see when they open the activity. Type directly into the instructions field; the student preview updates alongside. You can also add items — for example attaching a file or recording audio/video — if needed.

Step 2: Feedback by teacher

This step is the core of the tool: here you define the feedback you will give each student, and who you give it to.

Teachers give feedback to — choose how students are organised for your review. This has to be set up before students participate — once a student makes progress, it can't be changed.

• Individually — students work individually and are reviewed individually. Feedback is based on each student's individual skills and is visible only to them.
• As a group — students work as a group and are reviewed as a group. Feedback is based on the group's skills and is visible to all group members.
• Individually, show as groups — students work and are reviewed individually, but are displayed to teachers grouped by LMS groups. This makes it easier for multiple teachers to divide reviewing by group; the two "individual" options look identical to students.

• Criteria — the criteria that guide feedback on student work. Click Edit to add, edit, or delete criteria. See How to set up feedback criteria.
• When do students see their feedback (Visibility) — set to Immediately, After a certain date, or Never (release manually).

Advanced settings (Feedback by teacher):

• AI coach — students receive AI-powered, real-time feedback to improve their reviews.
• Explanation cards — create reusable explanation cards to save time when giving feedback. Click Edit to manage them.

Step 3: Read received feedback

Toggle Feedback on feedback so students rate the feedback they received on a usefulness scale of 1 to 10 (with optional written clarification). The deadline for reading received feedback is set in Setup activity → Deadlines.

Stage 3 — Setup activity

The final stage gathers the settings that apply to the whole activity — the ones you'll most often revisit. On the left you keep the step overview; on the right you set activity-wide options: Deadlines, Grade weighting, and Advanced settings.
 

Deadlines

Enable Steps have start and end dates, then set start/end dates per step in one place — the read-received-feedback end date, and any reflection end date all live here. The date picker offers quick options (e.g. previous step ends, 1 day after, 1 week after) as well as a calendar. Leaving a deadline blank keeps that step open indefinitely.

Grade weighting

Enable Steps have grade weighting to assign a weight to each step. Weights must total 100%  — the page shows a running Total grade weighting so you can confirm it. 

In Advanced settings you can set:

• Grade type — Percentage or Pass/fail.
• Require participation to receive a grade — if enabled, only students who open the activity receive a grade.
• Schedule grade publish — automatically publish grades at a selected date.
• Auto-publish after completing graded steps — automatically publish an individual student's overall grade once they complete all graded steps.

See how the configurable grading module works.

Groups

Select the group set for this activity and choose which groups/sections participate. Where your LMS supports it, sync sections and groups directly. For configuring groups inside Blackboard, Brightspace, or Canvas, see this article; to create groups on the platform, see this article.

Reminder: how you give feedback (Teachers give feedback to Inidviduals / Groups) must be set before students participate. Once a student makes progress, that configuration can't be changed.

When everything looks right, Save and publish.