Helping Students to Improve the Standard of Their Writing with Generative AI

An Evaluation of a Studiosity+ Pilot

Abstract

The University of Sunderland has been partnering with Studiosity for the past three years to provide an additional student support service which helps students to improve the quality of their academic writing. Their Writing Feedback service offers students the opportunity to submit draft pieces of writing for feedback on their grammar, level of writing, referencing, etc., with the feedback being provided by academic staff recruited from leading institutions throughout the world on a 24/7/365 basis, in under 24 hours.

In response to the mainstream adoption of generative artificial intelligence software solutions, Studiosity have developed the Writing Feedback+ service where student’s work is evaluated by AI, with the major benefit that feedback can now be provided to students in near real time.

As part of the development process for this new service, Sunderland were offered a pro bono trial for up to six months, and for use with a discrete cohort of up to 5,000 students. We chose to use this between May and August 2024 on our distance learning service which has approximately 4,000 students. This paper will examine the trial in more detail and explore some of the data which is now available on student usage and feedback.