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... Show moreThis 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. Show less
Interdisciplinarity of research is a hot topic because of new developments occurring at frontiers of disciplines (e.g. nanoscience), but also because of the urge for societal relevance of research.... Show moreInterdisciplinarity of research is a hot topic because of new developments occurring at frontiers of disciplines (e.g. nanoscience), but also because of the urge for societal relevance of research. A lot has been written on interdisciplinarity, however, relatively little empirical research has been carried out. In this thesis the value of quantitative, in particular bibliometric methods in research on interdisciplinarity is investigated and these methods are applied in a number of case studies. Methods are applied in three ways: in order to determine the interdisciplinary character of research; to validate evaluation processes in science, in particular with respect to interdisciplinary research; and to investigate knowledge flows between disciplines. The results show that bibliometric outcomes can offer a test, but also may offer additional information for peer review procedures in science. It also appears that the assumption that peer review is biased in case of interdisciplinary research, is not universally true. An analysis, with the aid of bibliometric methods, of the outcomes of a nation wide research assessment of physics showed no bias in peer review judgements in case of interdisciplinary research programs. In this study a more clear distinction is advocated between interdisciplinarity and societal relevance of research, and furthermore between top down stimulation and bottom up development of interdisciplinarity. This distinction helps to gain more insight into contributions to interdisciplinary developments from within basic research in disciplines. Citation analysis gives indications for the significance of such processes. E.g. citation analysis shows a relatively large knowledge flow from disciplines like basic life sciences and physics to other disciplines. Show less
