!IS1108 Ethics in Computing — cohort report
Most feedback at university scale comes with a tradeoff: depth or speed. You can give students detailed, individual feedback, or you can return work quickly across a large cohort — but rarely both.
Last semester, Ren ran our biggest university-level pilot yet with NUS Computing's IS1108, grading individual reports for all 426 students.
Feedback grounded in how the module is taught
We built a dedicated IS1108 context layer trained on the module's own materials — its frameworks (FISh), rubrics, and teaching approach. The goal was simple: feedback shouldn't be generic. It should be grounded in how IS1108 was actually taught.
Every student received detailed written feedback tied to the module's scope and expectations. Work that would have taken TAs significantly longer to produce by hand could now be generated, reviewed, and vetted — with far more consistency.
!TAs marking IS1108 reports in Ren
TAs worked directly inside Ren — reviewing each report alongside the AI's feedback, tags, and topic mapping, then editing and signing off before anything reached a student.
Why consistency matters
Grading isn't just about speed. It's about fairness.
When feedback is generated from a shared context layer and reviewed against the same rubric, every student is evaluated against a more consistent standard. That's harder to guarantee when work is spread across many markers, each carrying their own interpretation of the rubric.
Insights that are usually buried
After the batch, we shared cohort-level analytics with Prof Boon Kee Lee: where students struggled, which questions caused the most confusion, the most common misconceptions, and an estimate of time saved.
These are exactly the kinds of insights that normally stay buried inside manual marking — visible to no one, even after hundreds of hours of effort.
Why we built Ren
This pilot reminded us why we started building Ren in the first place: to help educators give better feedback, at scale, without compromising on quality.
A huge thank you to Prof Boon Kee Lee for being one of our earliest believers, and to all 19 TAs who made this possible.
We're opening a few more pilot slots for the next semester. If you're an educator who wants to explore faster, fairer, and more consistent feedback, talk to our team.