We’re proud to present the Writefull dashboard: a new feature that gives insights into students’ written academic language quality through Writefull metrics. The dashboard was developed in collaboration with VU Amsterdam, and will soon become available to all institutions.

The dashboard explained

As Writefull checks a student's text in Writefull for Word or for Overleaf, the dashboard shows how many language issues Writefull has spotted, and what kind of issues these are–giving a quick view on the academic language quality of the student's writing.

With institutional access, all students get their own dashboard, and (teaching) staff can invite students to share their dashboard. This way, both the student and teacher can monitor progress.


These are a few insights the dashboard offers:

1. The academic language quality of a student's texts

The overall number of language edits offered by Writefull gives an indication of a student’s written academic language quality. As a student improves their language and writing skills over time, making fewer errors, this number will go down.

2. Language aspects that need attention

The dashboard shows the metrics of edits across five main categories: grammar, vocabulary, punctuation, academic style, and spelling. The grammar category also has subcategories, like subject-verb agreement, prepositions, and tense.

This is valuable information for teaching and learning. As a teacher, you can see which aspects your students struggle with most, and give these special attention in your materials or classes. Likewise, a student can check their own dashboard and see which parts of their language need improving.

The dashboard can link to institution-owned pages with language tips, or, as a default, to relevant pages of Writefull's Academic Writing Lab.

3. Progress over time

For all of these metrics, the dashboard shows the trend over time. You can select a time period to see how language accuracy develops–for example, throughout a semester or writing course.


Reliability of Writefull’s metrics

Writefull’s metrics have been vetted by many international publishers, and found to be trustworthy indicators of language quality (example here).

Note that the dashboard should not be used to assess or grade students on their writing skills or language proficiency. These are complex, multifaceted constructs. Writefull’s metrics reflect academic language quality only, and through the lens of Writefull’s edits. The dashboard is not a testing instrument, but a tool to monitor progress and see which parts of academic writing need attention–to inform the teacher and guide the student.

Privacy

At Writefull, we do not store any of our users' texts, nor do we store the language edits offered by Writefull. For this reason, the dashboard only shows metrics of the number and types of edits–and not the underlying errors or edits.

Also, teachers or other staff will only get access to a student's dashboard once the student has agreed to give them access (this happens by email).

Getting access

The dashboard has recently been piloted by VU Amsterdam and will be made available to all institutions later this year. Are you interested in a free trial of the dashboard, along with Writefull's other language services for institutions? Please contact us at institutions@writefull.com.