Murdoch University

Established in 1974, with around 23,000 students across campuses in Perth, Mandurah, Singapore, Dubai and Malaysia, plus online students through Open Universities Australia. Its strategic themes are Sustainability; Equity, Diversity and Inclusion; and First Nations, exemplified by Boola Katitjiin, the Whadjuk Noongar name meaning ‘lots of learning’, given to the new learning and teaching building at the Perth campus.

In 2018–19 Murdoch experienced rapid growth in international students across many undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. A Tiered Learning Support Framework was devised to frame the catalogue of academic support available, and Studiosity was brought in to provide Tier 1 on-demand study help to all students through myMurdoch Learning.

Students submit writing to the service and revise their draft before final submission. A low-stakes initial assessment introduces it, run in a computer lab under the guidance of tutors. Two major essay assignments then provide a further cycle of feedback and reflection, the second being a longer, improved version of the first.

With immediate feedback, students have enough time to edit, and using the service for academic language feedback has allowed teaching staff to focus on more specific content and research-related feedback.

489 unique students took part, more than 90% of the target cohort, across 2,123 submissions, an average of five interactions per active student. 94.0% reported satisfaction, 92% felt more confident, 96% felt they received the help they needed, and 97% found the service easy to use. Average return time was 56 seconds.

Analysis of the service’s advice to students was conducted by a lead tutor with extensive Academic Literacy Development experience, an expert reading the feedback itself rather than a survey of how students felt about it.

The analysis found that the service provides specific, detailed and relevant feedback, suggesting better word choices and sentence structures through explanations and examples. It effectively detects significant student errors and offers examples and suggestions for improvement, and the feedback remains consistent across multiple submissions, identifying significant errors and making relevant suggestions each time.

It highlights issues in the text and links to explanations, examples and videos, helping students develop critical thinking through examples and case studies. It also highlights positive aspects of a student’s work and provides an ongoing record of feedback, emphasising the most frequent issues and strengths. Feedback arrives quickly and multiple submissions can be made for the same assignment.

The lead tutor’s conclusion: “Overall, Writing Feedback+ provides effective, specific, and relevant feedback, offering good suggestions for improving critical analysis.”

Following the pilot, the University decided to make the service available to all 23,000 students from 2025 and extended the partnership for another three years, seeking to engage more gateway units and embed the service in assignment workflows.

Professor Don Klinger, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education): “The professional approach of Studiosity with their service provision is greatly valued by Murdoch. This approach is validated through the 94% satisfaction rate from our students. We’re excited to be extending our partnership into the future.”

“Feedback is instant and clear.”

“Very good guidance on structuring the document and also identifying areas within the document that requires citations. I also like the guiding comments on the use of tenses within the document. I use it all the time as I find it very useful. I have gotten good results from all my assignments submitted to Studiosity for a final check before submitting them to LMS.”

“I will keep in mind all the feedback for further improvement.”