Peer feedback on academic writing : effects on performance and the role of task-design

Abstract

This thesis investigates

the relation between peer feedback and higher education students’ writing

performance through a quantitative lens. In doing so, it aims to advance our

knowledge on the extent to which peer feedback impacts students’ academic writing, and on how specific aspects of task design relate to student performance. First, a meta-analysis was conducted to synthesize the available evidence regarding the impact of formative peer feedback on higher education students’ writing performance. To date, the number of well-controlled, quantitative studies still appears scarce. Further, peer feedback appeared to be more effective than self-assessment and comparable with teacher feedback. Second, three empirical studies were conducted to investigate the impact of specific elements of peer feedback task-design. In an on-campus course, same-ability matching and different-ability matching yielded similar results. Online (in a MOOC), peer reviewers’ ability related positively to participants’ writing performance. The third empirical study showed that providing peer feedback can be as beneficial to students’ writing performance as receiving peer feedback. The final chapter describes a questionnaire to assess students’ peer feedback beliefs, which can support teaching staff and researchers in monitoring the acceptance of and – hence – the potential effectiveness of peer feedback as an instructional method.