MyEssayFeedback.ai – Formative Feedback for Student Essays

Session Description

MyEssayFeedback.ai (https://myessayfeedback.ai) is a new online tool created by educators for educators. Unlike most AI assessment tools, the goal of this tool is not to automate the grading process. Instead, the concept is based on the notion of integrating AI into the process by providing formative feedback while keeping the most important human elements to be performed by humans.

The process starts with the teacher, who creates a prompt which is then used by the AI system to analyze the student essays. After the essay is analyzed, the student can provide a Feedback Reflection on the AI feedback, in addition to submitting a Revision Plan. The student's essay, the AI feedback, the Feedback Reflection, and the Revision Plan are all separated out and viewable by the teacher. In addition, the teacher can then provide their own feedback, viewable by the student, to close the feedback loop. Finally, the teacher can optionally use the tool for peer review of the essay among the students, providing additional feedback for the student.

Since the focus is on the process as opposed to a grade, students have more motivation to engage the process and use the tool to help improve their writing instead of using AI to do the writing for them. Students also appreciate the immediate feedback that an AI tool can provide, allowing for quicker iteration and more agency in the process.

Presenter(s)

Eric Kean
MyEssayFeedback.ai (Founder)
Western Washington University (Mathematics)
Bellingham, WA, USA

Eric Kean has taught Mathematics and the Viola at Western Washington University for 20 years. In addition, he has developed Educational Technology for the last 13, focusing on projects that are pedagogically sound and are either OER or very low-cost for students. Most recently he is Lead Developer for ADAPT which is an online homework companion to Libretexts, an OER resource which serves millions of students. And, MyEssayFeedback, his most recent passion project, was developed with the hopes of creating an ethical, responsible, and low-cost AI tool that is both student and instructor centered.

Anna Mills

Anna Mills has led over 40 faculty development sessions in the U.S. and abroad on critical AI literacy, academic integrity, and pedagogical applications of AI in higher education. She teaches writing at Cañada College and College of Marin and previously taught at City College of San Francisco for 17 years. Her collection “AI Text Generators and Teaching Writing: Starting Points for Inquiry” is featured in the Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse. She serves on the MLA/CCCC task force on writing and AI, and as a consultant for OpenAI, she tested GPT-4 before its release. She has also written an Open Educational Resource (OER) textbook, How Arguments Work: A Guide to Writing and Analyzing Texts in College, which has been used at over 65 colleges. Anna's writing on AI has appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed as well as in Computers and Composition, The Journal of Applied Learning and Teaching, and Open Praxis.