How Eli Changes Teaching
Eli is a transformative writing tool. It eliminates many of the tedious and time-consuming aspects of writing instruction, Eli leaves more time to focus on teaching students to become better writers and reviewers.
Making Teaching Writing and Review Easier
Eli makes it far simpler to conduct writing reviews in face-to-face, online, or hybrid classrooms. Review activities that used to take two or three class sessions now can be done within a single class meeting:
- Assign students some writing to be reviewed
- Provide students with a review prompt and criteria to guide their responses
- Ask students to read and respond to the writing of their peers
- Ask students to read the responses they received from their classmates and formulate revision plans
- Review student reviews to identify trends in the class to both improve reviewing and guide student revision
Eli helps teachers do all of that in as little as 30 minutes. Really - see How Eli Works.
For teachers, Eli collects student writing, peer feedback, and revisions all in one place - no more milk crate full of papers from multiple classes or a learning management system that makes accessing and downloading student work frustrating. For the first time, Eli makes it possible to see the writing and reviews of the writing process side-by-side.
Eli also makes things easy for students. They submit their writing and do their reviews in the same place all year long. Eli is accessible from any computer with access to the internet, so reviews can be done in class or as homework. The feedback students receive from their peers remains and can be utilized whenever they are ready to revise.
Transforming How Writing is Taught
Eli makes the work of the writing teacher easier. Eli’s features also have the potential to transform the way writing is taught. With Eli, teachers can:
- Utilize powerful writing and review analytics
- Identify trends that correspond to your learning goals
- See individual student work in two important roles: as a writer AND as a reviewer
- Collect data about student writers over the span of a course or an entire academic career
Bill Hart-Davidson, one of Eli’s co-creators and a veteran writing instructor, describes how Eli has transformed his teaching:
Jeff Grabill, another of Eli’s creators and also a veteran writing instructor, talks about how he uses Eli in the classroom and how it lets him intervene in the writing process in real time:
