How Eli Works

Overview

Intro to Eli, description of key terms and functions.

Step 1: Create Review

Teacher selects reviewers, identifies which assignments to review, and defines review criteria.

Step 2: Reviewers Read

Reviewers examine classmate writing using framework or criteria specified by the teacher.

Step 3: Reviewers Respond

Reviewers write suggestions and respond to metric evaluations as specified by the teacher.

Step 4: Writer Strategizes

Writers respond to reviews they received from classmates and strategizes revision.

Step 5: Writing Analytics

Teachers get detailed displays of student review work and can access drafts and reviews all in one place.

Overview: What Eli Does

Eli facilitates the teaching of review and supports student revision of writing. It automates the work of collecting papers and compiling both drafts and feedback, making it easier to conduct peer review in writing classrooms. Because student drafts and feedback are visible to teachers in one software interface, it is much easier to teach students how to be better writers and better reviewers.

With Eli, instructors can:

Create a variety of review feedback types
Receive real-time review results
Receive detailed reporting on individual students and an entire class
View the writing process (draft, review, revisions) in one place
Monitor student progress over time

With Eli, students can:

Obtain detailed feedback from classmates
Provide detailed feedback to classmates
Build revision strategies
Quickly access writing and review history

What Eli Doesn’t Do

Eli is not plagiarism detection, it’s not an attendance system, a gradebook, or a communications platform (email, IM, etc). Also, Eli is not a peer editing tool – it doesn’t enable students to make direct changes to each other’s papers.

Eli enables teachers to help students become better writers and reviewers, believing that better reviewers make better writers.

Eli helps teachers do what they do best—teach.

Primary Functions

There are two primary functions inside Eli: assignments and reviews.

Assignments - assignments are the primary method for getting writing into Eli to be reviewed. Students can compose directly inside Eli (especially good for short, in-class writing), copy-and-paste out of a word processor into Eli, or upload their files directly.
Reviews - Once students have submitted some writing they can begin reviewing. The review process inside Eli is where it stands apart from other writing tools – the multi-step review process makes it easy to coordinate review, gather data from reviewers, and respond to those reviews, even in real time.

The review criteria in Eli can be as simple or complex as the learning goals demand. A review generally follows a multi-step process.

: Eli is designed to make the mundane work of managing a writing course – like managing your roster, as seen here – as quick and easy as possible.

: The Course Dashboard in Eli gives you quick access to all of Eli’s major features: managing your roster, creating assignments and reviews, and accessing previous assignments and reviews.