Negotiating meaning at a distance: peer feedback in electronic learning translation environments

Abstract

Recent research has contributed to an understanding of the positive impact that peer feedback has on student learning, but there is a lack of experimental studies that focus on how peer feedback affects student translation competence. Our study investigates whether the latter are enhanced in the Trans-Atlantic & Pacific Project (TAPP) with an experiment that included the explicit practice of student peer feedback competence and the negotiation of meaning among peers. Students – whether writing, translating or usability testing – collaborated online both within their own university peer group and with a partner university. The results of this intervention, however, suggest no clear tendencies or relation between peer feedback and meaning-related translation competence.