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Short Answer

Unlock the power of peer feedback

Short Answer helps K-12 teachers get every student individualized feedback in minutes instead of days through engaging, effective, peer feedback activities. Students give, receive, and discuss feedback on written work in a way that deepens content understanding and develops more empathetic classroom communities.

Overview

Information on this page is provided by the innovator and has not been evaluated by HundrED.

Web presence

2022

Established

100

Children

1

Countries
Target group
Teachers
Updated
February 2023
Unlock the power of peer feedback

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

The fundamental “student engagement” problem persists because schools don’t empower students with agency nor the social, affirming learning environments they need. Lack of meaningful engagement leads students to care more about their grades than their learning. Memorization and recognition of concepts for short-term grade boosts come to be valued over mastery and application of knowledge.

What does your innovation look like in practice?

The Short Answer web app helps K-12 teachers facilitate engaging and effective peer feedback activities. We challenge students to construct responses to teacher-generated questions, provide scaffolded feedback to peers through the process of comparison, and discuss results as a class. Students are prompted to reflect on their individualized feedback to improve their understanding and develop self-regulated learning skills.

Short Answer's research-based theory of change is grounded in formative assessment best practices, empowering teachers to make more informed instructional decisions, engage their students, and reduce achievement gaps. It also improves students’ self-regulated learning skills and helps them develop lifelong social-emotional learning habits through authentic, embedded experiences.

In our pilot, 82% of students reported that using Short Answer helped them improve their understanding of class content.

How has it been spreading?

Since our launch in February 2023, over 100 teachers have used Short Answer for free with their students. 2,500+ student responses have been logged. Our goal is to help as many teachers as possible introduce the power of peer feedback to their students.

Short Answer is a winner of the Stanford Learning Design Challenge and the Futures Forum on Learning Tools Competition; we are an ASU-GSV Elite 200 EdTech startup.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

Teachers, visit myshortanswer.com and sign up for a free account today!
Contact: ben@myshortanswer.com

Twitter: @myshortanswer

Implementation steps

Launch Activity!
Create a question on the teacher dashboard and customize the feedback criteria that students will use to evaluate peer responses. Then, select from a variety of activity types and adjust time settings.
Peer Feedback Away!
Students construct their responses and then engage in a comparison-based peer feedback activity.
Discuss!
Using results generated from the activity, teachers lead a class discussion about what makes for strong understanding of content. Along the way, students learn how to give and receive supportive, empathetic, and culturally-responsive feedback, developing key SEL skills.

Spread of the innovation

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