{"id":1515,"date":"2025-11-18T12:02:27","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T12:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/?p=1515"},"modified":"2025-11-18T12:02:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T12:02:27","slug":"feedbackfruits-pilot-an-end-and-a-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/2025\/11\/18\/feedbackfruits-pilot-an-end-and-a-beginning\/","title":{"rendered":"FeedbackFruits pilot: an end and a beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

From January 2023 \u2013 June 2025, the Centre for Learning and Teaching (CLT) piloted software called FeedbackFruits, an external platform designed to add a variety of assessment and feedback functionality to Moodle. During this period, both staff and students engaged with a range of activities, surfacing valuable insights into its strengths, limitations, and potential impact.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The pilot has now officially ended<\/span> and <\/span>we offer a huge thank you to the staff and students who took the time to try it out and provide valuable feedback. As a result, we\u2019re able to share a brief summary below of what we did and what we discovered. The Faculty of Engineering & Design will continue to learn more about the platform as they have begun their licensed use of it in this academic year. Please get in touch with Yvonne Moore, Digital Education Developments Lead, if you have any questions about this or any other educational technology development.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Why we decided to pilot<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

One goal of the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) team in the CLT is to support staff in the most effective use of the educational technology we have available. Where we discover areas for improvement, we spend time reviewing available options, either within the existing toolset or by looking further afield.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Via discussions during curriculum transformation work and the annual NSS analysis, we identified potential gaps in the toolset in relation to assessment and feedback practice. In approaching FeedbackFruits, our goals were to test functionality for improving the feedback experience for students whilst streamlining the process required to administer assessments, where the focus could be on scaling quality feedback in a timely fashion.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

FeedbackFruits was available to all teaching staff at the university, to allow us to gather as much information as we could. However, we appreciate that some staff were reluctant to try out a \u2018pilot\u2019 tool due to the legitimate concern that it may only be available for a short time, but nevertheless across the pilot timeframe we had engagement from 67 staff and 3000+ students.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>From the student perspective we wanted to know if FeedbackFruits could improve their ability to deliver constructive feedback to peers, carry out effective self-assessment, use assessment criteria, and better understand their received feedback. It was important to also check the usability and accessibility of the interface, and the ease of participation in activities.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>For staff, we wanted to know if it was possible to streamline the online feedback process and reduce the time required to administer an assessment, whilst providing insight into the students\u2019 participation and development using detailed analytics.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How did it go?<\/span><\/h2>\n

A total of 111 activities were trialled across 13 different departments, with 'peer review\u2019 and \u2018group member evaluation\u2019 proving the most popular. We received feedback survey responses from 30 staff and 96 students. Some staff also kindly gave time to answer questions about their use cases and to follow up on their survey feedback responses.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the final year of the pilot <\/span>94% of staff <\/span>(n=17),<\/span> found FeedbackFruits intuitive and easy to use, 82% felt their FeedbackFruits activities enhanced student learning and 76% felt students\u2019 use of feedback was also improved. An impressive 94% felt they experienced productivity\/efficiency gains since using FeedbackFruits and 100% wanted to continue using the platform. From the student (n=40) perspective, 85% agreed FeedbackFruits was intuitive and easy to use with 67% agreeing their activities provided them with useful feedback. While 65% agreed FeedbackFruits activities increased their interaction and engagement with their course, 52% felt this helped improve critical thinking skills.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Overall, the technology has proved itself to be helpful particularly for the administration of group activities where peer assessment and team evaluations are involved.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What did we learn?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

Both staff and students agreed the platform is easy to use. <\/span>However, l<\/span>ike any tool, with more complicated scenarios comes an <\/span>increasing <\/span>increas<\/span>ed<\/span> number of options and settings and this sometimes affected usability.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Peer review<\/span><\/b> was a popular activity where students were asked to provide feedback on work submitted by their classmates. Staff felt the platform-supported administration of these activities to be helpful and efficient.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Group Member Evaluation<\/span><\/b> was also used multiple times, to allow students working in teams to review the performance of its members. Students were more critical of peer review as an assessment activity, requiring clearer instruction on why this was a useful learning approach (e.g. a work related, employability skill needed in many careers).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We also learned that these tools can be used for a variety of assessment scenarios. Some examples:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n