24/7 instant feedback on writing for all students

Academic Writing has distinctive hallmarks that reflect the importance placed on critical thinking, argument and reflection. It’s also tough to learn. Now AI can provide instant feedback — even on your 17th draft, at 3am…

Those of you who follow CIC’s work will know that over the last 5 years, we’ve been refining an automated feedback tool tuned for academic writing, called AcaWriter. We’re delighted to say that we’ve recently announced its release to all UTS students! [retweet]

While the primary audience is of course students, who struggle to learn good writing skills, research and academic staff may find it useful for reflecting on (for instance) their Research Abstracts, and any employee engaged in reflective writing as part of their professional development may benefit from it’s feedback.

You won’t have seen a tool quite like this before, so to get the most out of it, check out the student and staff orientation site which explains what genres of writing it handles, and gives examples of its use. Then  if you’re in UTS, give it a go… Here’s a quick intro for students…

…and educators:

If you’re not at UTS, all is not lost! There’s a free demo site for you to experiment (stripped down features, no saved documents), and you can also join the free tutorial on Writing an Abstract, which links through to the full version.

How does it work? What do students think about it? What about academics? Does it improve writing? All these questions are of course part of the applied R&D program underpinning AcaWriter.

Oh, and did we say? We’ve released it open source, so you can run it at your university ?

Looking for a hosted solution so you don’t have to mess with tech stuff? Drop us a note at cic@uts.edu.au and tell us what your interest is. We’re looking at how we might offer this service, and it helps to know the demand.