Due to the positive evaluation of Writefull, the VU Education Lab has extended the licence by one year until July 2025. The VU Education Lab was able to secure a university-wide pilot licence for Writefull in 2023 through a special procurement and development process. For both students and teachers.
In spring 2024, the VU Education Lab conducted a short survey of all Writefull users to find out the extent of use and experiences.
At the time the survey was sent out, there were 510 individuals who had used Writefull once or more. 300 employees and 210 students. Of this total group, 210 responses were received. Most of the users were from the STEM faculty and the School of Business and Economics. Half of the users used the extension with Word, about a third used the extension with Overleaf. The rest, 31%, said they did not use it (anymore).
Of the group who do not want to continue using, about two-thirds indicated that they still prefer (a combination) of all kinds of other tools for more and better advice such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Grammarly, Word functions etc. They also think the VU should respond to this.
The group wanting to continue its use found Writefull especially convenient to use, and it helped them in creating better English-language academic texts. Paraphrasing is widely used and checking spelling and grammar. Overleaf users are especially positive about the tool because Overleaf is their main programme for creating texts, and Writefull works very well with it. Of the group that does want to continue its use, all indicated that VU should (continue to) offer such tools to students and teachers.
A re-evaluation will be done in early 2025, by which time it is hoped that the direction VU is taking around the deployment of generative AI in education will also be clearer.
For more information and a VU licence, visit the Canvas-page about Writefull.