Process Feedback for Google Docs
Extension Actions
CRX ID
chcbikmmlhbbdkfiaaaljabpefdfajnb
Status
- Extension status: Featured
Description from extension meta
Shows the edit history of a Google Docs document
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Description from store
📌 What is the Process Feedback extension?
The Process Feedback extension is for teachers and students. It pulls the edit history of a Google Docs document and turns that history into a writing process report.
In the process report, you can explore copy-paste events, the frequency and timing of breaks taken, typing fluency, time spent on each paragraph, time allocated to revision compared to initial drafting, and total typing time.
✨ Key Features:
➛ Support for multiple tabs
➛ Shows user contributions
➛ Works for Google Classrooms
👤 Who is it for?
The extension is primarily designed for students to self-reflect on their writing process.
⚙️ How does it work?
The extension pulls the entire edit history of your Google Doc, which is already maintained by Google, and turns the writing journey into an interactive process report.
🛠 How do I use the extension?
➛ Step 1: Add this extension to your browser
➛ Step 2: Open your Google document
➛ Step 3: Find the "Explore Process" button near the menu bar and click on it
➛ Step 4: If you prefer the ribbon view instead, change the settings in the extension popup
🔗 How to share the writing process report?
➛ Share Link: Copy the URL of the report link and share it.
➛ Share PDF: In the sidebar, click "Download Process Report" to download a PDF of the process report.
📚 How can teachers integrate it into a course?
Please visit www.processfeedback.org/gdocs for step-by-step instructions on how to integrate the extension into your course.
✨ How is it different from other extensions?
Unlike extensions like Draftback, this extension provides many rich features. Students can also download a PDF report or simply share a link to their process report. In a way, it is a free alternative to extensions like Draftback, Originality.ai, Revision History, and Grammarly Authorship, but with many more features.
❌ Unable to install the extension?
➛ To install any Chrome extension, you need to log in to Chrome.
➛ Please reload the Google Docs page after installing the extension.
➛ Your institution's IT department may need to approve installing any new Chrome extension.
⚠️ Limitations
The extension is not well-tested with large documents with 100K+ changes or 100K+ characters. Its text styling is also not perfect yet. If you run into issues using the extension, please email us at [email protected].
🔒 Privacy policy
➛ By default, this extension does not collect any user data and runs fully locally in a user's device.
➛ When a user chooses to save online, for sharing the report with others, it collects the author information and full edit history data of the Google Docs document. Collected data is stored only so users can view reports with the process report link and share the report with others.
➛ For co-edited documents, users should always obtain permission from all co-authors before viewing or sharing process reports.
📜 Terms and conditions
By installing the extension, you agree to and acknowledge the terms and conditions at https://processfeedback.org/terms/.
📖 Reference/citation
If you are using Process Feedback for a research project, please cite the following peer-reviewed research article:
Adhikari, Badri; "Thinking Beyond Chatbots' Threat to Education: Visualizations to Elucidate the Writing or Coding Process"; Education Sciences; 2023.
Latest reviews
- Peanut
- peak, please keep it free genuinely only expected to see the editing process, you can also see other stats like wpm and most used words. It also doesn't take long for a writing report to finish.
- Kim Lenz
- Work in a high school with IB program; helps with accountability and when suspecting AI, can show to students. I show them an example at the start of the year so students know what can be seen.
- Bradley Summerhill
- I teach composition at a community college. Flags (including false flags) for AI-generated text have made my job more difficult than it ought to be. The Process Feedback for Google Docs browser extension is not just a catch-the-cheating-student device. It also allows the writing teacher a quick, feasible way to see what the student writer is actually doing--not what they say or believe they are doing. I can have a conversation with the student about how they need to take more time and space to draft and revise. (News flash: most students turn in first drafts.) I am skeptical about most apps; it is rare that I feel compelled to write a review.
- Marilee Malott
- Outstanding and reliable data to evaluate the data of Google documents.
- Tim Finnigan
- It's hard to believe that this tool is free, given that it provides even better insights into student writing process than other extensions locked behind paywalls. Watch the tutorials. Learn the charts. Be rewarded with a better understanding of how your students write.
- Joan Vredenburgh
- This is an extremely helpful tool. I especially appreciate being able to see if students pasted information from other sources.
- Katie Dion
- As everyone else is saying, this is invaluable for addressing writing concerns.
- Dan Lewis
- Extremely helpful. The insights into student process are invaluable to me (as is having my students realize that I have these insights at my easy disposal)! Very pleased with Process Feedback!
- Nicole Centrella
- Extremely helpful in making sure my students are working and the writing is authentic. I was able to see that multiple students sat and did nothing while a substitute covered my class, and I was also able to reward those students who worked diligently in the Google Doc for 45 minutes : )
- Vicki Gotham
- Thank you so much! You are helping create a world of truly educated students by giving teacher a way to check if the writing process was authentic. Being able to have this conversation about the writing process with my seventh grade students can help them learn to compose their writing themselves. And: that this app is free! I cannot thank you enough.
- Stephen Harper
- When a free software that helps me in a day to day teaching and allows for better understanding of how my students got their ideas and if they truly wrote it
- Luke McFarland
- So far this is working on day one. I still have a few questions, especially when it comes to the meaning of "editing time". Some kids still seem AI to me, but the data I understand doesn't seem to say that. Still learning, but overall, it's already a gamechanger. I was literally about to quit teaching English.
- Katie McCloskey
- Really helpful tool for examining student work. Highly recommend.
- Gerry Johannsen
- Fantastic tool, especially for teachers! Now that my students know that I can see the process AI use has plummeted.
- Padma Rangarajan
- Really helpful, and in the absence of any other help for those of us trying to teaching our students to actually learn how to write and think with integrity, absolutely vital.
- Adriana Hartford
- Love this app! I reccommend it all the time!
- Jessie Newhouse
- Excellent tool with so many ways to look at student work. Incredibly helpful! Thank you
- Jennifer Slovak
- This extension makes checking and proving the integrity of students' writing so much easier!
- Nikki Gregor
- Our school doesn't purchase anything to assist us with the writing process. This is AMAZING and FREE. It offers quite a few valuable tools inside of the extension. As an English teacher, it is proving very useful.
- Hannah Wood
- This app makes determining the authenticity of writing objective. The copy/paste feature is most useful. My students began writing in a lock-down browser and transferred their work to a Google Doc that I assigned them. Process Feedback allowed me to quickly identify parts copied into the document that were not from the lock-down browser.
- Nicola Zulu
- This is a game changer for teachers - thank you for providing a free resource. Certainly would recommend this tool.
- Ryleigh Ledford
- As a teacher, having a free resource to maintain creative integrity in the classroom is huge. I certainly recommend implementing this software. My method for out-of-class writing calls for students to share (granting editor privs) on a google doc, so that I have access to the doc activity... this extension really elevates that security and checking for me as well as shortens the amount of time it takes to search through. 10/10 rec!
- Gregory Hartley
- Now instead of trying to prove a student DIDN'T write their paper--setting up the classroom for negativity and suspicion--students can now easily prove that they did--encouraging positivity and trust. This software is a game changer and the biggest tool in my kit for combating AI cheating.
- Jessica Dobson
- A great tool to watch the writing student's process. It allows me to have a better conversation with them about how they write and if they are using tools that write for them
- Sam
- As a student, this is an extremely helpful tool for preemptively combating AI accusations. Especially for anyone who writes coherent, structured reports. Highly recommend. One of the best parts is that there are no account creation requirements or paywalls to get in your way.
- Daniel August
- Not all heroes wear capes. This is an amazing and indispensable tool for classroom teachers. I use it daily to analyze student work. One of my favorite features is the ability to see how long a student spent on a document at a glance. It's practical, quick, easy, and very user-friendly. Bravo!
- LMS D
- I love this tool for helping students see their writing and revision process. The amount of metadata it provides in easy-to-see visuals helps me show students if they are--or aren't--using a recursive writing process. It also helps me report cheating with AI. The app gives me the ability to plug the metadata into an AI for analysis--it provides the prompt and the data--so I can analyze the writing process, not the writing itself. It keeps the student's work and personal info safe, while helping save me time analyzing. LOVE LOVE LOVE
- Caleb Clinkingbeard
- The visual typing tool is a big deal, but the graph of characters inserted or deleted is magical for finding AI use. You can even watch students then trying to put those AI-generated sections into their own words. I'm a science teacher who uses it primarily for finding AI-use, but it is a great way to see how your students actually write. This should be standard-use for language and writing teachers.
- Skye
- An absolute AMAZING tool. As a writer I love seeing my writing process, but the other tools always had paywalls, this one doesn't!! I recommend to everyone and anyone
- Brian McEwen
- This has been an invaluable tool as a teacher to help keep students accountable but also to show students what their processes look like.
- Matthew Rodriguez
- Love this as a student. It's fun to see how I write and where I move around. It has so many comprehensive analytics about how fast I type and how often I work. The visuals are great to understand how long I am actually writing for. I just wish it had an option to do a full document review when you have multiple tabs. I know it may be hard as this is already quite difficult to put together. But would be nice addition.
- King Posadas
- Great to look at my writing process and check document progress!
- Beth Kara
- Phenomenal extension! Love it as a window into my students' writing process.
- Tad Kirkendoll
- An essential for English Teachers grading their students' essays in keeping students accountable for their own work.
- D. Chen
- I don't often give 5-star reviews, because I feel like there's always room for improvement. However, Process Feedback is the best out there right now. It has a very clear interface, and the most basic part of it (the video playback) is superb. However, it has a lot of features which provide additional data on the document being analyzed. I also prefer it in terms of privacy. All I need to do is be logged into my Google account. Draftback wants more access that I'm not willing to provide. In addition, I can run it on any document shared with me without it needing to access the author's account and the like. (I tried it with my other Google account.)
- DAVID DOMINGUEZ
- I am very pleased with this application. This gives instructors a data driven approach to align with rubrics. Administration doesn't allow the use a AI detectors due their black box nature, however, this tool is acceptable.
- Kathleen Houston
- This is so much better than Draftback and really goes into all aspects of a student's writing process with charts and revisions. It is amazing. Once I understood what to look for, I was blown away. It also helped with AI detection as most AI detectors are useless. This is a great tool for teachers and I hope for students, too. Also, the company provides webinars to explain what this extension can do and they offer a guide to provide information. Really so useful for educators. It's free, too, which is unheard of in the education world of technology!
- Chase Cleveland (Chasethepirate)
- Is good
- Aileen Bowlby
- After Revision History started charging, a colleague recommended Process Feedback, and I find it an invaluable tool for not only combating the use of AI and other forms of plagiarism, but in seeing my students' work in progress, which gives me insight into their strengths and weaknesses. As a result, I have been able to have knowledgeable and more helpful conversations with students about the writing process and have seen improvements in their process and end product.
- Devora Manier
- I started using this app to curb AI plagiarism - and it definitely helps with that. However, it is an even more powerful tool to help students in the organizing, drafting, revising, & editing stages of writing. I require my students to complete all stages of writing in the same document - that way, through this app, I can see the evolution of their papers from start to finish. This has helped me give more individualized feedback to my students on where in the writing process they should focus their efforts and what kind of changes they need to make to their process.
- Walter Poelzing
- It is a very powerful application. It gives quality data on how a document was created and allows teacher a powerful tool to have a conversation with a student when irregularities come up. It also helps students to see how their writing is improving over time. So it is not just for checking students who try to use short cuts, but it gives credibility to those who do not. It works both ways, and that is why this is a great tool.
- Thomas Johnson
- I never fill these rating things, but I am incredibly grateful for this extension, which a fellow teacher told me about - as it serves as a tremendous tool to better ensure kids are not using AI or other inappropriate short cuts.
- Nina Earlywine
- This is a great program for looking at revision history and being able to track what information is being added and when. This helps to hold students accountable for the work they are submitting and upholds the integrity of those students when they are flagged for AI usage.
- Anne LaGrand
- I just started using this and so far, it's great. Gives a timeline of edits (like draftback) but also shows material that was cut and paste, number of characters - additions and deletions - it's very thorough. It's very difficult to navigate the issue of AI in education, but I think this is a very helpful resource.
- Amanda Crawford
- Love this app! Thank you.
- Lisa Wills
- For anyone who used the Draftback extension (before they started charging for it), this is a free, amped up version of that extension. I especially love that I can see exactly what was copied and pasted into the document - and use this to have concrete conversations with students about the source of their writing.
- John Mazo
- Process Feedback is an outstanding tool for teachers. It gives me clear insight into how my students actually work on their writing—how long they spent, what they typed, when they revised, and where they copied and pasted from. Being able to see a draft replay and detailed copy‑paste history has made it much easier to support honest, authentic work and to have evidence-based conversations with students. The extension is easy to use, runs smoothly with Google Docs, and immediately became part of my daily workflow. It saves me time, reduces the stress of tracking potential plagiarism, and helps me give more targeted feedback on the writing process, not just the final product. Highly recommend this extension to any educator who assigns writing. It’s one of the most useful classroom tools I’ve added in years.
- Marcus Irvin
- Just got it but it has been working great. And it's free!
- Julie Deal
- The features on this are great for ensuring that students use their own thoughts. I love the draftback feature of real-time edits and the one that shows any copy and pastes, which differentiates between copies from within the text and without.
- Sam Eslamieh
- Amazing tool. Just what teachers need and much more