Maximising Student Success with Automatic Formative Feedback for Both Teachers and Students

This paper discusses the outcomes from the building and empirical investigation of two automatic feedback systems, namely OpenMentor and OpenEssayist that can support student learning. The findings from OpenMentor and OpenEssayist usage suggest that prompt targeted feedback for time poor students can maximise student success. Both systems facilitate the users to take ownership and reflect on their own work, through provision of feedback at a point where they can build on it in subsequent tasks. This should have the most impact on the users’ understanding of the requirements of academic writing and the tutors’ understanding of feedback for academic writing. The systems are also starting to be used as research tools that allow pedagogical strategies to be open to test.