What is Feedback Loop?
Feedback Loop launched in fall 2023. Our team’s experience with peer reviews dates back to 2018, when EduSourced, co-founded by one of our founders, released its 360 peer review feature. Peer review in EduSourced was partly modelled after tools used in industry so that students would have a similar experience to what they can expect in their careers.
Feedback Loop built on EduSourced’s peer review history into a fully realized platform for peer review that is designed to be engaging, easy to use and work entirely where instructors and students already are: the Learning Management System (LMS). As of this writing, Feedback Loop is used by 14 institutions and has served peer feedback surveys to over 22,500 students.
What is CATME?
CATME (an acronym for Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness) was released in October 2005 as a team making tool and eventually offered what would become its primary use case: a peer review solution. For years, CATME was offered for free to any instructors who would adopt it for their teamwork-based courses.
Over time, CATME started charging for its adoption as funding was needed to continue hosting the tool. CATME pioneered peer evaluation in the classroom, but it did not continue innovating or emphasize students’ user experience. It’s functionality and look and feel have been largely unchanged over the years even as the tool moved from free to a paid model.
Comparing Feedback Loop with CATME
With CATME having transitioned to a paid model, we think educators should look to other options to see if the 2005 tool, as innovative as it was for its time, should be replaced. Feedback Loop offers a much more flexible user experience, wrapped in a modern, easy to use interface and built on modern security and accessibility standards. Below are what we think are the primary advantages of using Feedback Loop over CATME.
1. Fully Supported with 7 Days a Week Customer Support and Guaranteed Uptime
We have heard of several faculty having both support and downtime issues with CATME as of fall 2024. In two cases we know of, the tool went down without warning when peer feedback needed to be sent and no one was available to offer support or provide any updates as to when it would be back online. We know how critical peer feedback is as it’s usually scheduled in advance to align with a syllabus and, if being graded as an assignment, can cause issues with students if there is any downtime. As a professionally maintained and supported product, Feedback Loop is a sustainable solution and our customer support is available 7 days a week.
2. Easier to Use (and mobile-first design!)
Because peer evaluations are typically sent only a couple times per academic term (although this study suggests sending them more often) it needs to be easy to do with a short learning curve. we designed our tool with ease of use as our primary focus so that all faculty, instructors, and students feel welcome using it. Feedback Loop also adheres to modern accessibility standards.
Peer feedback in Feedback Loop can be pre-scheduled to line up all of your surveys at the beginning of the term (especially helpful if sending surveys as assignments). More information on scheduling peer feedback here.
For students, Feedback Loop’s survey response view is inspired by peer feedback tools used in the workplace and is designed to be mobile-friendly. Students get a focused view of each student while reviewing them so that they can concentrate on the individual being rated before moving to the next student.
3. Instructor Time Savings and Automated Grading
This client case study with Utah State University details the hours of instructor time savings Feedback Loop was delivering even before we released the auto grading feature. With automated grading, Feedback Loop is even more efficient to use.
CATME does not integrate with the LMS gradebook. Feedback Loop includes a customizable, automated grading option to tackle the most time-consuming element of peer feedback: grading. More information on how auto grading works is available here. Hours of work grading, done in seconds and at the instructors direction and grades are sent to your LMS gradebook with one click.
4. Significantly More Flexible Survey Builder
Feedback Loop provides research-backed peer feedback templates, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution for peer feedback given the variety of disciplines and course levels that use groupwork. CATME is restrictive in providing options for customized peer feedback and does not support fully custom-built survey content.
In Feedback Loop, instructors can use our provided templates, modify them or build new ones from scratch. Any survey templates created by faculty are easily reused in any future courses and can even be published to a library of templates shared by other instructors at the school. Feedback Loop provides an open sandbox of custom survey creation, including our popular points allocation question type, among several other options (including likert scales, custom scales, text entry and points pool allocation).
5. Fully Integrated with your LMS
Everything in Feedback Loop works entirely within the Learning Management System (LMS) and surveys can even be sent and completed as LMS assignments. There is no additional cost for this integration.
While CATME recently added a Canvas integration, Feedback Loop is built from the ground up as an LMS tool. Feedback Loop also supports all major Learning Management Systems including Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle and D2L Brightspace). LMS integration is included in all Feedback Loop licenses but is an add-on for CATME.
6. More Engaging for Students
Rating teammates is a learning opportunity and we wanted to provide a results view for students that incorporates industry peer review best practices. Feedback Loop’s student results view is a detailed, tailored performance report that can be automatically generated across all teams and students with a single click.
The response view, where students complete their peer ratings is equally engaging: Feedback Loop pulls in student profile pictures from the LMS that students view when rating that individual. Each peer gets their own tab so the students are highly focused on that individual before moving on to the next peer to rate. And everything student-facing is optimized for mobile!
Final Word: Feedback Loop vs. CATME
While CATME pioneered peer review for Higher Education, as with all software, ongoing development and innovation are needed. With CATME having to raise prices to cover their hosting costs, while also failing to provide customer support or a reliably online product, we think switching to a professional solution has become critical.
Feedback Loop is the next generation peer review choice and we invite all educators, including users of CATME to evaluate it for their courses. To learn more, click here to schedule a demo or here to watch a video walkthrough of the platform and see for yourself how easy to use and powerful Feedback Loop is.
Coming Soon: Feedback Loop Team Creators
Feedback Loop is bringing automated, flexible and optimized team creation to to the tool. As with every feature we built, this will fully integrate with your Learning Management System by passing these teams to your LMS roster to avoid any redundant or manual effort.
