The already-built Feedback in Progress activity provides the student-facing activity and accompanying resource in FeedbackFruits and Canvas. Use this guide to make the course-specific updates and decisions needed to prepare it for your students.
Review the Already-Built Activity
Before making course-specific updates, review the student-facing materials:
As you review them, identify the course and project information you will need to prepare the activity, including your project teams, relevant project stages or milestones, and any terminology or project references that may need to be adapted for your students.
What You Need to Update
Complete these required updates before publishing the activity for students.
Connect the Feedback in Progress activity to the Canvas Group Set for your project teams.
Confirm that students are assigned to the correct teams before the activity begins.
Set the activity timing for a point when students have enough experience working together to provide feedback based on their observations and while enough project time remains to act on what they learn.
Feedback in Progress is commonly used near the midpoint of a project, but the appropriate timing depends on the structure and duration of the collaborative work.
FeedbackFruits Timeline
Within the FeedbackFruits activity, allow enough time between deadlines for students to complete the work that later steps rely on:
- Given Reviews deadline: Allow enough time for students to complete their self-assessment and provide ratings and coaching feedback to their teammates. Larger teams may require more time.
- Reflection deadline: Schedule the reflection after feedback is released, allowing enough time for students to consider what they received.
- Received Reviews and Feedback-on-feedback: Keep this step available after students complete the activity. Under This learning step closes, leave the setting at Never so students can continue accessing the feedback they received.
For help locating and configuring these settings, see Group Member Evaluation: For Teachers (Setting Up).
See Customizations That Change the Learning Experience if you plan to change other settings.
Canvas Due Date
Leave the Canvas assignment due date blank. Feedback in Progress includes multiple deadlines within the FeedbackFruits activity, and a single Canvas due date may give students the impression that the entire activity is due at one time.
The Canvas assignment includes a reminder that the activity has multiple deadlines and directs students to the dates shown within the activity.
If students in your course rely heavily on the Canvas Calendar or reminders, you may add the FeedbackFruits step deadlines to the Canvas Calendar. If you do, keep those dates aligned with any changes you make in FeedbackFruits.
Optional Customizations
The Feedback in Progress activity is ready to use as designed. If you'd like to make it more specific to your course or project, consider the optional customization below.
Adjust Terminology or Project References
Adapt terminology to reflect the language of your course, discipline, or project. Replace generic references to the team, project, or collaborative work when more specific language would make the activity clearer to students.
Before Students Begin
Confirm that the correct Canvas Group Set is connected, students are assigned to the correct teams, the FeedbackFruits timeline is configured as intended, and the Canvas assignment does not have a single due date.
Once these checks are complete, make sure the Canvas assignment and accompanying student resource are published and available to students.
If you are using Feedback in Progress as designed, your activity is ready for students.
Customizations That Change the Learning Experience
If your course or project requires changes to the already-built activity, consider how the changes may affect the learning experience.
Required Number of Peers to Review
The default asks students to review all teammates because each teammate can provide a different perspective on the collaboration. Reducing the number of reviews can make the activity more manageable for larger teams, but students receive fewer perspectives and some teammates may not exchange feedback with one another.
If you reduce the required number of reviews, revise student directions that tell students to provide feedback to each teammate.
Reviewer Anonymity
Leave reviewer anonymity off. Identified feedback gives students practice communicating honest, constructive feedback directly to another person and allows them to seek clarification or continue the conversation. Anonymous feedback may make challenging feedback easier to give in some situations, but it removes opportunities to practice navigating that person-to-person exchange and reduces students' agency to follow up on feedback they receive.
If you enable anonymity, review the student and instructor resources for guidance that assumes students can follow up directly with the teammate who provided feedback.
Students See Received Feedback
The activity uses “After the review deadline” so students receive feedback automatically once the Given Reviews deadline has passed. This separates the giving and receiving phases without requiring you to return to the activity to release feedback.
If you want time to review feedback before students see it, select “After a certain date” and set a later release date. Make sure the release date leaves students enough time to review what they received, complete feedback-on-feedback, and reflect before the Reflection deadline.
Do not use “Immediately” or “Never (release manually).” “Immediately” can expose students to incomplete feedback while teammates are still completing or revising their reviews. “Never (release manually)” makes feedback release dependent on instructor action; until feedback is released, students cannot complete the remaining steps.
Questions, Criteria, and Prompts
The questions, Collaboration Criteria, coaching prompts, and reflection prompts shape what students attend to, give feedback about, and reflect on. Changes can strengthen alignment with your course or discipline, but they also change the learning experience rather than simply customizing platform content.
If you change these elements, update any corresponding directions and companion-resource guidance so students encounter a coherent activity.
Individualize Students' Group Project Grades
Leave this setting off. Feedback in Progress is designed for students to provide one another with perspectives and coaching, not to determine their teammates' project grades. Enabling this setting puts students in the role of influencing one another's grades through their peer evaluations, changing the purpose and stakes of the activity.
If individual project contribution affects the project grade in your course, handle that separately using your existing approach to grading project work.
Grading Weights
Giving feedback carries the greatest weight because each student's participation provides teammates with perspectives they cannot generate for themselves. Reading and reflecting on feedback remain required, but primarily support the student's own opportunity to learn from what they receive.
If you change the percentages, consider what the new weighting communicates about the relative importance of giving, receiving, and reflecting on feedback. Keep giving feedback as the greatest emphasis if you want to preserve the designed grading approach.
Self-Assessment
Self-assessment gives students their own perspective as a reference point when they later consider how teammates experienced their collaboration. Removing it shortens the activity but eliminates that comparison.
If you remove self-assessment, revise the student directions that ask students to assess themselves and use that assessment as a reference point when considering feedback.
Feedback-on-Feedback
Feedback-on-feedback gives students another perspective on their developing feedback practice: how the feedback they provided was experienced by the person receiving it. The usefulness rating is intentionally a limited signal rather than a definitive judgment of the feedback's quality.
Removing this step shortens the activity but removes that feedback-literacy loop. If you remove it, also revise the student directions and grading configuration that refer to rating and receiving feedback-on-feedback.
For instructions on locating and changing FeedbackFruits settings, see Group Member Evaluation: For Teachers (Setting Up).
Verification Checklist
Use this checklist to verify the ready-to-use activity's setup. For instructions or the reasons behind a setting, follow the linked section in this guide.
Review and prepare
- Review the student-facing activity and accompanying resource and identify any course or project references to update.
- Connect the correct Canvas Group Set, and confirm students are assigned to the correct teams. Project Teams
- Set activity timing when students have collaboration experience and time remaining to apply feedback. Activity Timeline
Verify deadlines and availability
FeedbackFruits
- Set the Given Reviews deadline to allow time for self-assessment and teammate feedback.
- Set the Reflection deadline after feedback is released.
- Keep Received Reviews and Feedback-on-feedback available; set This learning step closes to Never.
Canvas
- Leave the Canvas assignment due date blank. If adding step deadlines to the Canvas Calendar, align them with FeedbackFruits. Canvas Due Date
- Confirm the student activity and accompanying resource are published and available. Before Students Begin