Sysrev in the Classroom: Enhancing Research Literacy Through Collaborative Reviews
Today’s world is defined by an overabundance of information. For students new to academic research, the overwhelming volume of publications—combined with the easy availability of AI-generated summaries—can make it tempting to skip reading the papers themselves, ultimately undermining the development of essential science literacy skills.
Getting students to engage critically with the scientific literature is a key step in their development as researchers. Class-based collaborative literature reviews offer an effective way to deepen students’ engagement with published research, promote critical thinking and discussion, provide real-world research experience, and spark enthusiasm for the research process. Read on to find out how Sysrev empowers instructors to turn literature review into a dynamic and engaging learning experience.
Designed for Scalable, Student-Friendly Collaboration
It’s easy to create projects and set up teams of as many students per project as needed. By providing project invite URLs in your course management system or inviting students by email, students can easily join projects with the click of a button with minimal instructor management time.
The engaging progress dashboard on the Overview page provides clear progress tracking for TAs and instructors. Motivate students by using the Member Activity visualization for friendly competition and goal-setting.
Sysrev’s intuitive Reviewer interface keeps the focus on learning—not on navigating a complicated platform.
Sysrev also makes it easy to provide in-platform guidance, whether through linked documents or a built-in project overview. Provide students easy access to review tasks, assignment instructions, and useful background information, right in the platform.
Insights and Oversight for Instructors and TAs
Sysrev’s label analytics dashboard allows instructors and TAs to track individual student performance and comprehension of review tasks. Analytics helps you identify areas where students may be struggling or may have misconceptions, guiding in-class discussions leading to improved learning outcomes.
Sysrev user roles enable instructors to control what students and TAs can see and do within the platform, ensuring appropriate oversight and a secure learning environment.
Examples from the field
Case Study #1: Engaging undergraduates in a scoping review of reflective practice in higher education
In an undergraduate research course at Carnegie Mellon University, educators and librarians at led undergraduate students in a scoping review to map the scientific literature on reflective practice in higher education settings. Students reviewed research of reflective practice pedagogy, and identified reflection exercises and strategies with a high impact on student learning. Through this process, students learned how to effectively read scientific abstracts and articles, discussed the challenges of defining concepts like “reflective practice” and effectively organized and categorized research in ways that informed their own research management practices.
The resulting and ongoing scoping review will inform guidance and best practices for integrating reflective practice into courses at CMU and beyond.
To learn more about this project, see “Systematic Searching: A Case of Undergraduate Researchers Developing Information & Data Literacy Skills”, a presentation by Ryan Splenda, Richelle Bernazzoli, Melanie Gainey, Korryn Mozisek, and Kimberly Piatt.
Case Study #2: Inspiring young researchers through building a literature-derived database of epilepsy genes
In this project, Dr. Nasir Mirza at the University of Liverpool used a collaborative Sysrev literature review aimed at developing a database of epilepsy genes and proteins, to help identify novel pathways to prioritize promising epilepsy treatments. He also saw this as an opportunity to engage high school and early career college students in the research process, giving them a chance to contribute to real research and to get them excited about pursuing research in their educational journeys.
The project, called CACHEP (Computationally-Aided Curation by Hand of Epilepsy Proteins), brought together over 60 students from across a range of UK-based secondary and higher education institutions who were trained to recognize and extract information about epilepsy genes from scientific papers. Sysrev facilitated progress tracking and accuracy checks to ensure that students were on track and understanding the task.
To learn more about this project, check out this webinar by Dr. Nasir Mirza and view the CACHEP Sysrev project.
What students are saying about conducting literature reviews in Sysrev
This experience fostered a deep appreciation for the nature of research…It stands as a cornerstone in my academic exploration.
“I feel more confident in reading a scientific paper”
“I’ve gained insights into research and learned to analyze data in an efficient way