Teaching Tools

Get Started: Eduflow

IMPORTANT INFORMATION: The University are phasing out the use of Eduflow by the end of 2023. A new and similar tool will be in place in the near future.

Below you will find an introduction to how Eduflow works, and then step-by-step instructions with videos for setting up a review for your Blackboard course space. Click the following link for a PDF with full written instructions: Eduflow Guidance.

Before setting up your review it is highly recommended that you work through the ‘Preparation’ section of the staff guidance and develop your peer review plan and timeline alongside one of our eLearning team. This is to ensure that both you and your students receive the support you need to complete an effective peer review. Book a support session via this link.

We have also created a page for student guidance on peer assessment, including resources on how to give constructive criticism. Please share this with your students and use as a template for your own communications around peer assessment: Student Guidance: Peer Assessment Tools.

What does Eduflow do?

Eduflow is a peer assessment tool which allows you to set up your own custom ‘flow’ – a series of tasks that your students will follow depending on the outcomes required. A standard flow could include :

  • A submission.
  • Review/s of peer’s work.
  • Reflection on feedback received.

Eduflow is useful if you want your students to be giving and receiving constructive criticism on individual or group work (formative or summative), it also is very customisable and integrates a variety of software and allows for multimedia uploads.

Based on a pilot study in the Spring of 2022, feedback from students who had their work anonymously reviewed by their peers was positive, below are some quotes from a Foundation Year course who used Eduflow to review classmates draft essays.

What did you learn from the feedback you received?

‘I should make sure to put my references in the proper format so that it is more professional.’

‘Very good feedback, starting the critical analysis now, and adding references.’

‘The flow and language is good so far, just need to put in more details for the formulas and a good conclusion to finish it up.’

Setting up your review

*Please note that currently (September 2022) Eduflow does not allow you to sync with Blackboard groups, so if you have groups of students whom you want to review each others work, you will need to do this manually. This process is described below but please allow time for this process.*

Creating an Eduflow link to your Blackboard course space

Before you can create a review for your students to complete, you must create a link within your Blackboard course.

  1. Navigate to the relevant content area and ensure Edit mode is turned on.
  2. Click Build Content > Eduflow.
  3. Edit the title.
  4. If the task is summative, in the Marking section choose Yes next to Enable Evaluation and enter the points to create a column in the Grade Center.
  5. Choose whether to hide the column from the students or not, and add a deadline for completion.
  6. You can choose to keep the link hidden from students until the review opens by choosing the No option next to Permit Users to View this Content in the Options section.
  7. Click Submit and your link will be created automatically, as will your Grade Center column if you have chosen to add points.

Creating a peer review

To get started, if you have never created an Eduflow review before, when you click on the link you created you will be asked to Connect with Eduflow. Once you have connected, you will see the default review space with the title set as your course unit name.

  1. Click on the ellipsis (three dots) next to the course title to rename the course or change the thumbnail image.
  2. To get started creating your peer assessment click on the blue Add New button at the bottom left of the screen. This opens the Activities Page providing a list of different activities.
  3. Hover over an activity and click on the eye icon that appears to the right of the title to get a summary of what an individual activity does.
  4. You can add content and rearrange them in any order that you wish, or you can use one of the workflow templates towards the bottom of the Activities Page, two examples are the Peer review flow and Peer and self review flow.
  5. Hover over the icon to the left of the flow title, it will turn into a blue + button, click here to add to your course.
  6. The activities will be automatically added to the left-hand menu under the course name (students will work through this menu in sequential order).
  7. Once added to the left-hand menu, you can hover and click the ellipsis to open sub-menus for each activity, including the settings.
  8. In Settings you can change options such as the minimum number of reviews required per student, whether students can edit reviews once submitted, anonymity, to set a minimum number of words per review, to add a feedback or reflection rubric, or to add prerequisites (i.e., all students must watch an introductory video before they can submit their work).
  9. Embeds & integrations: scroll to the bottom of the Activities Page to add integrations including Google Forms, Google Docs, Padlet, Microsoft Teams, YouTube Prezi and more.

A note on rubrics

The Review work done by your peers and Reflect on your feedback tasks come with a default rubric of two simple questions. These can be modified as required, and rubrics can be set up as text-based answers, Yes/No answers, or as a scale. We highly recommend using a peer feedback rubric to guide students through the evaluation process.

Peer feedback rubrics keep students on track as they review their peers’ work. As a result, both students benefit: the reviewer engages more deeply with the work, and the reviewee gets a more constructive critique of their work.

More in-depth information and guidance on peer feedback rubrics can be found on the Eduflow website, including their 60-page guide to creating effective feedback rubrics.

Adding students to the course

Once you have your peer review flow all set up and ready to roll out, you are ready to add students. If you make the previously created link in your Blackboard space available, students who click this link to access the Eduflow review are automatically enrolled as participants. If you want to group students together, you will need them to enrol via email first so you can add the groups or tags before they start their peer review. You can upload a CSV file with student email addresses and add them via email. To do this, follow the steps below.

  1. Click on the Participants tab in the top right hand menu.
  2. Under Email Invites, click Invite participants and then Invite learners (you can also add instructors or assistants from outside your course unit).
  3. Click on File import and then upload your CSV file.
  4. Once the students have clicked on their email invitation, they will appear as enrolled participants under the Participants. Please note that email invitations occasionally end up in Spam folders so warn your students to check!
  5. You can then group students using the group formation activity or by using Tags.

Adding an assessed task

If the review is to be graded, and that grade synced with the previously set up grade center column (see Creating an Eduflow link to your Blackboard course space > Step 4), you will need to set up a Scoring activity and Grade passback.

  1. Add a Scoring activity to your flow. Students will be able to see their scores as they progress through the review if you make it available to them.
  2. From your left-hand menu click on the three dots next to the Scoring activity to access the settings.
  3. Under Select Inputs, decide what your scores will be based on. For example, in the video above, the peer review was given a total of 20 points, split into three parts; students need to Submit, Review and Reflect on their feedback; once they have completed these three activities they will have a score of 100%.
  4. Next, add a Grade passback activity to your flow. This will not be visible to the students as it only acts to connect the review to a grade center column.
  5. In the settings for the Grade passback activity, Select an output to link. In the example in the video above, Scoring activity was chosen.

Managing the review

  1. From the main course page, you will see three menu options in the top right header: Course, Summary and Participants. Use the Participants menu to see who has activated their EduFlow account, and send reminder emails to those that haven’t.
  2. Summary gives you a table of student progress, scores and metadata. From here you can also export your data once the review is complete.
  3. By clicking on the activities in the left-hand menu from the main course page, instructors can review the submissions and their corresponding peer reviews and self -reflections.