Case Study: University of Alabama at Birmingham enhances peer learning and student engagement with Kritik

University of Alabama at Birmingham - Customer Case Study

The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Associate Professor of English, Dr. Cassandra Ellis, was seeking a better alternative to her LMS’s discussion boards for her asynchronous literature course. The challenge was that students were not engaging critically with each other’s posts, forcing her to manually foster conversations, which resulted in one-on-one interactions instead of a collaborative class environment. She turned to Kritik’s peer evaluation platform to address this issue.

By implementing Kritik, the instructor was able to transform discussion prompts into mini-assignments with customized rubrics. The platform’s algorithm automatically managed group distribution and peer review pairings, significantly reducing the administrative workload. Students responded positively, becoming more focused in their evaluations and actively improving their own writing by adapting strategies from their peers. Kritik provided a formal structure for the course and empowered students through features like the anonymous Spotlight tool for highlighting exemplary work.

University of Alabama at Birmingham

Cassandra Ellis

Associate Professor of English