The Instructor review activity allows instructors to review learners and learner submissions. Instructors and assistants can use the Instructor review activity to answer questions in a feedback rubric. Feedback can include comments, numeric scaled questions, and more. The feedback can be tied to a learner submission directly, or the instructor review can be designed without a source so an instructor can offer feedback on the learner overall.
How the Instructor review activity works
The Instructor review activity is meant for instructors and assistants to use when they are giving feedback to learners.
Instructors and assistants can use this activity to give reviews to learners. Reviews can be based on a previous submission or can stand alone without using a submission.
This activity is typically meant to be hidden from learners. Instructors use it to answer questions in a feedback rubric. You can send the review back to learners to see the feedback using a Feedback reflection activity, or you can collect the data without making the review visible to learners.
Take a look at this example of an instructor giving a review based on a previous submission. Note that the submission is available to view on the left side and the feedback rubric is available on the right side.
Take a look at the learner POV before an instructor completes a review
Take a look at the learner POV before an instructor completes a review
This learner has submitted work, but the instructor hasn't completed their review yet. Notice that the Instructor Review is hidden from the learner.
Take a look at the learner POV after an instructor completes a review
Take a look at the learner POV after an instructor completes a review
This learner has submitted work, and the instructor has completed the review. The learner can see the feedback by selecting Reflect now.
In the reflection, the learner can see their original submission and the questions in the rubric. They can see the answers from the instructor and the written feedback.
It is optional, but instructors can give learners a chance to answer reflection questions about the review they received in the Feedback reflection activity.
About the Flow
While an Instructor review activity is powerful on its own, it's even more powerful when paired with additional activities. You can add a single Instructor review activity to your course under Activities, or you can use the pre-built Instructor review flow under Flows.
An Instructor review flow contains three activities that have already been connected to each other as a source. This flow includes:
A Submission activity (for learners to submit something)
An Instructor review activity (for instructors to give reviews)
A Feedback reflection activity (for learners to see the review from instructors)
You can modify the Instructor review flow to match with your use-case. Here's a few examples:
Reviewing learners without submissions
If you wish to give feedback to learners, but don't need them to submit an assignment, you can go to the Instructor review activity settings and toggle on Allow instructors to review learners without a submission. This allows you to give reviews of learners without viewing a previous submission.
Keep feedback hidden from learners
Instructors may want to make comments or assign scores to learners without sharing the comments or scores with learners here. If you don't want learners to see the feedback from the instructor review, you can either hide or complete remove the feedback reflection activity. In this way, learners will never see the reviews made in the instructor review activity, but instructors and assistants can see the reviews and associated data.
How the Instructor review activity is completed
When a learner is ready to be reviewed, the instructor will see the option to + Add review to the learner. After giving feedback and submitting, the Instructor review activity will be completed automatically for the learner.
Typically, this would unlock the Feedback reflection activity that follows, so learners can see the feedback they received from the instructor.
How to set up an Instructor review activity
Select + Add new and choose Instructor review under Activities.
Alternatively, you can add the Instructor review flow to your course - This is the most efficient way to add a complete learning flow to your course, because it consists of a Submission activity, Instructor review, and a Feedback reflection activity.
(Optional) We recommend to hide the instructor review activity from learners because they don't need to take any action here. To make an activity hidden from learners, select Settings and choose Visibility. Select + Add rule and choose User type. Toggle off the visibility for Learners.
Determine if this Instructor review will point to a Submission activity as a source, or if the activity will not be connected to any previous submissions.
If you want to use a previous Submission activity as a source, go to Settings and toggle on the option to connect the review to a submission. Then, choose the source to be the Submission activity that you want to review.
In the activity settings, select Edit feedback rubric. Use the rubric editor to add questions that you will use when reviewing the learner.
To allow learners to see their feedback from the instructor, connect a Feedback reflection activity to the Instructor review activity by adding it to the course and selecting this Instructor review activity as its source.
Take a look at the tutorial below to see an example of setting up an instructor review activity.
Common questions about the instructor review activity
Why would the Instructor review activity be hidden from learners?
Why would the Instructor review activity be hidden from learners?
We recommend that the Instructor review activity be hidden from learners because learners don't have any reason to interact with this activity. This activity to solely meant to be a space where instructors or assistants can see learner submissions and give feedback via a feedback rubric. In this way, you can include any directions for instructors and assistants in the course description, and learners won't see this.
To make an activity hidden from learners, select Settings and choose Visibility. Select + Add rule and choose User type. Toggle off the visibility for Learners.
How will learners see the feedback?
How will learners see the feedback?
Learners will view feedback from an Instructor review activity in a Feedback reflection activity. If there is no Feedback reflection activity added to the course, or if the Feedback reflection activity doesn't use the Instructor review activity as its source, then learners will not be able to see their received feedback, so you should add a Feedback reflection activity.
Learners already completed a Submission activity. Can you add an Instructor review activity after they've submitted?
Learners already completed a Submission activity. Can you add an Instructor review activity after they've submitted?
Yes! You can add an Instructor review activity to your course at any time. To do this, select + Add new and choose Instructor review under Activities. In the settings, toggle on the option to connect the review to a submission. Then, choose the source to be the Submission activity that you want to review.
How do tags and subsets work for the Instructor review?
How do tags and subsets work for the Instructor review?
You can assign the Instructor review activity to a smaller subset of your learners using tags or by manual selection. This means that only the learners who are assigned will be able to receive Instructor feedback. This can be helpful if you only want to review a smaller group of learners.
You can set completion or visibility rules based on tags. We recommend to use the same rules for the Feedback reflection activity that is connected to the Instructor review. This will ensure that only the learners who received instructor feedback are able to interact with the Feedback reflection activity.
How do prerequisites work for Instructor review?
How do prerequisites work for Instructor review?
If learners need to fulfil certain requirements (prerequisites) before they should receive an instructor review, you can set up the instructor review activity with prerequisites. With the help of prerequisites you can select which activity learners have to complete first before they are able to receive feedback from instructors.
How do deadlines work for Instructor review?
How do deadlines work for Instructor review?
We recommend to hide the Instructor review activity from learners, since learners don't need to take any action in this activity. For that same reason, adding open dates or deadlines to the Instructor review activity is not necessary.
Can you give anonymous reviews?
Can you give anonymous reviews?
Yes - In the activity settings, you can toggle on anonymous reviews. This will anonymize learner names in a few places: on the list of learners to review, on the review interface, and on the download of all submissions. Instructors or assistants who give reviews will not see the name of the learner. Note that this will not anonymize the Summary page. This feature is only meant to help remove bias from the reviewing process.
Is the feedback from instructors anonymous?
Is the feedback from instructors anonymous?
No - Feedback from instructors is not anonymous. Learners will be able to see the first name of the instructor as displayed in Eduflow.
Can feedback be sent to all learners at the same time?
Can feedback be sent to all learners at the same time?
Yes - If you want all learners to be able to see their feedback at the same day and time, you can add an open date under visibility rules or completion rules to the Feedback reflection activity. An open date on visibility rules will make the Feedback reflection activity invisible until a specific date and time, and a completion rule will make the Feedback reflection activity locked until a specific date and time.
Can instructors edit their review after they submit?
Can instructors edit their review after they submit?
Yes - Instructors can click on the name of the learner in the Instructor review activity to see and edit their review.
Completion & Visibility settings
You can use completion and visibility settings to add specific rules for who can view and access this activity, including setting deadlines and prerequisites. You can see details about these rules here.