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Edwards, Chris; Whitelock, Denise; Cross, Simon and Wild, Fridolin
(2022).
URL: https://ahenetwork.org/ahe-conference-2021/
Abstract
Two years ago, many universities found they urgently needed to move thousands of students online for their studies due to the pandemic. Whilst there were significant effects, that they enabled their students to continue studying was a considerable achievement which avoided greater disruption (Dapieve Patias et al, Pagoto et al. 2021). The pandemic also impacted on students studying at distance learning universities (Aristeidou and Cross, 2021). As many students’ experience of their studies was not as expected, some may have welcomed additional support even if not provided by their tutor. This report considers a potential candidate for such support. It is an online tool developed specifically to facilitate students in improving their writing of essays and reports and is. The Open Essay Optimiser (OEO) built around a linguistic analysis engine, is a further development of OpenEssayist (Whitelock et al, 2014) and provides automated feedback on several aspects of a student’s text, including key words, phrases and sentences, use of course references, and most importantly, of the connectedness of key concepts within the text and how themes are brought together in the conclusion. This approach is designed to enable students to become more autonomous and competent in writing within the academic context (Ajjawi et al, 2021). It allows the editing of work within the tool to explore the impact of changes, so work can be improved prior to submission for marking. We describe the development of the OEO, its trial within one masters module, the findings, and the potential affordances of OEO both in online distance education and as an online tool within face-to-face institutions.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
