The impact of e-feedback on the revisions of L2 writers in an academic writing course

This study explored the relationship between electronic feedback (e-feedback) and its impact on second-language (L2) writers’ revisions specifically focusing on how L2 students responded to their peers and what kinds of revisions they made as a result of the feedback they received. The 20 L2 writers wrote, responded, and revised on a database-driven web site specifically designed for writing and responding. Other forms of feedback they received included oral feedback from friends and peers and from face-to-face meetings with university writing center tutors. Results suggest students preferred oral feedback. However, e-feedback had a greater impact on revision than oral feedback, implying that e-feedback might be more useful. Additionally, e-feedback helped L2 writers focus on larger writing blocks. Thus, L2 writers may use e-feedback to create macro revisions. This exploratory study highlights a new form of revising and responding and offers insights into joining oral response to online collaboration.     

Effects of high level prompts and peer assessment on online learners’ reflection levels

Reflection plays a very important role in learning processes and is very helpful for promoting learning performance. Many higher education institutions today are actively promoting learners’ reflection ability in order to help them cope with the fast changing world they will be entering when they graduate. Online learning provides potential for applying new teaching and learning strategies. However, it has not yet been systematically studied how to concretely apply reflection strategies in an online learning environment. The aim of this study is to explore how high level prompts and peer assessment can affect a learner’s reflection levels in an online learning context. The participants were 157 university students and each individual was randomly assigned to one of the fourteen learning conditions. We found that the main factor affecting reflection levels is high level prompts followed by high quality observation that has a moderating effect on learners’ reflection levels. However, peer feedback has no significant influence on reflection levels.     

Cross-age peer tutors in asynchronous discussion groups: Exploring the impact of three types of tutor training on patterns in tutor support and on tutor characteristics

This study was conducted in an authentic university setting with fourth-year Educational Sciences’ students operating as online peer tutors to facilitate freshman tutees’ online collaboration and knowledge construction in a blended “Instructional Sciences” course. Taking into account prior research uncovering weaknesses in online peer tutor behaviour, the aim of the study was to explore the possibility to optimise the quality and the nature of online peer support. In this respect, the study examined the impact of three tutor training conditions (multidimensional support, model/coach, and control condition) on peer tutors’ actual tutor behaviour in asynchronous discussion groups and on tutors’ self-efficacy beliefs, perceived collective efficacy, and training evaluation. Quantitative content analysis was applied to study online peer tutor behaviour. More specifically, two coding schemes were used focusing respectively on the occurrence of different e-moderating activities and on the evolution from modeling to coaching behaviour. Tutors’ self-efficacy beliefs, perceived collective efficacy, and training evaluation were assessed by means of questionnaires.     

‘B Seeing U’ in unfamiliar places: ESL writers, email epistolaries, and critical computer literacy

This article poses a rich, to date unexplored, resource for facilitating students’ development of critical technological literacy: the email epistolary novel. With reference to a developmental writing class populated primarily by international English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students, the article describes how the study of an email epistolary helped students to examine technology critically and made students’ technological literacies a course emphasis. This approach to writing pedagogy, the article argues, illustrates how ESL students negotiate their technological literacies in the context of their assimilation into American undergraduate communities. The article concludes by suggesting that email epistolaries can guide students at all levels toward more nuanced understandings of how technological literacy emerges in dialogue with other literacy practices.     

Students’ reflection on online self-correction and peer review to improve writing

Reflection is considered as a mental process of an individual’s internal problem-solving activity and rarely observed in face-to-face instruction. As a consequence, students have few opportunities to observe and learn from each other. This study aimed to arouse students’ reflection on both self-correction (one’s own problem-solving process in writing) and peer review (peers’ problem-solving process in writing) to improve their texts in an online system. A sample of 95 undergraduate students was recruited to write a reflective journal, which was analyzed by content analysis to compare their reflection on self-correction with peer review in writing. Results of this study revealed that reflecting on the differences between self-correction and peer review enabled students to monitor, evaluate, and adjust their writing processes in the pursuit of text improvement. In their reflective journals, students claimed that self-correction helped them detect grammatical errors (local revision) while peer review allowed them to view their own texts from others’ perspectives. Based on others’ perspectives, they could make further revisions on text development, organization, or style (global revision). Through reflection on self-correction and peer review, students were willing to provide further support to peers and learn from each other in the process of writing.     

Structuring peer assessment: Comparing the impact of the degree of structure on peer feedback content

The present study examines the added value of structuring the peer assessment process, by providing students with a peer feedback template with a varying structuring degree, for the peer feedback content quality in a wiki environment in higher education. The present study took place in the 1st year of a university course in Instructional Sciences (N = 176) and more specifically compared three conditions: no structure peer feedback (control), basic structure peer feedback, and elaborate structure peer feedback condition. Quantitative content analysis of students’ (n = 41) peer feedback messages was performed, and an analysis of (co)variance revealed some discrepancies between the conditions regarding the proportion of peer feedback content categories: (1) peer feedback style, (2) verification type, (3) verification focus, (4) elaboration type, and (5) elaboration focus. This study demonstrated that a higher structuring degree in a peer feedback template during the peer assessment process might have an impact on peer feedback content with respect to the above-mentioned categories; the peer feedback content. Results revealed significant differences between the three conditions regarding the peer feedback content categories. This study illustrated how a practical instructional intervention in the feedback process can increase the potential impact of peer assessment and boost students’ learning in higher education.     

Confidence and competition online: ESL student perspectives on web-based discussions in the classroom

English as a Second Language (ESL) students bring a diverse array of perspectives on language learning that inform how they negotiate different kinds of spaces in the university writing classroom. This study addresses the variance in how three different ESL students participated in web-based discussion boards and chat rooms in their first-year university writing course. Documenting students’ perceptions of technology provided pedagogical insight into how students took up or dismissed particular kinds of web-based writing. This study found that individual students made choices in their web-based writing in ways that reflected their previous experiences with technology and writing, their views of themselves as students and writers, and their relative comfort level with their peers in the classroom. However, their choices were also constrained by the pedagogical structure of the course, including the centrality of the instructor and the institutional directive for individualized assessment.     

The effect of moderator’s facilitative strategies on online synchronous discussions

Moderators play an important role within a computer supported collaborative learning environment, and thus facilitative strategies and communication technology are nowadays used to enhance students’ learning. This study proposed facilitative strategies as a guide for students’ learning, and explored the influence of these strategies on the students’ online synchronous discussion. A total of 331 senior high school students from eight computer classes in northern Taiwan were recruited to participate in this study. They were randomly assigned into an experimental condition, with the moderators’ facilitation to complete online learning tasks, and the control condition without moderators’ support. To fulfill the goal of the research, four strategies—helping students focus on the main topic, facilitating students’ making argumentation, giving students positive feedback, and helping students sustain threaded discussion—were adopted to facilitate the online synchronous discussion in the experimental condition. According to the results of the content analysis, four group discussion patterns were revealed, including collaboration, centralization, partial contribution, and non-interaction. The findings suggest that the moderator helped enhance the collaboration pattern and increase the online participation rate. In addition, it was found that the strategies of helping students focus on the main topic and giving students positive feedback were frequently employed.     

Audio peer feedback to promote deep learning in online education

We investigated the relation between providing and receiving audio peer feedback with a deep approach to learning within online education. Online students were asked to complete peer feedback assignments. Data through a questionnaire with 108 respondents and 14 interviews were used to measure to what extent deep learning was perceived and why. Results support the view that both providing and receiving audio peer feedback indeed promote deep learning. As a consequence of the peer feedback method, the following student mechanisms were triggered: “feeling personally committed,” “probing back and forth,” and “understanding one's own learning process.” Particularly important for both providing and receiving feedback is feeling personally committed. Results also show that mechanisms were a stronger predictor for deep learning when providing than when receiving. Given the context in which instructors face an increasing number of students and a high workload, students may be supported by online audio peer feedback as a method to choose a deep approach to learning.     

Camtasia in the Classroom: Student Attitudes and Preferences for Video Commentary or Microsoft Word Comments During the Revision Process

In the last ten years, libraries, individual departments, and professors have experimented with screen-capture software to develop edited tutorials, record in-class lectures via presentation software, and record think-aloud rationale for difficult problem sets. Moreover, screen-capture software has been used to provide visual/audio feedback for student writing. Currently, there is scant research on visual/audio feedback via screen-capture software in writing courses. The present study examines student perceptions and attitudes about two different modes and media of teacher feedback: Microsoft Word comments versus visual/audio commentary. The results indicate that the mode and medium of teacher feedback had an impact on students’ perceptions about the rhetorical context of the revision process and perceptions about the teacher/student relationship. Students who preferred the visual/audio modality of the teacher commentary videos cited their conversational quality, clarification of expectations, and reference to more global issues in writing. On the other hand, students who preferred the Microsoft Word comments were more apt to discuss its indexical quality in that students could easily revise surface level features or locate the “problem” sentence. The results also indicate that an either/or approach to teacher feedback is not necessary. Students articulated the relevance of using a combination approach in which Microsoft Word comments and the teacher commentary videos could be used for different elements or stages of the writing process. As instructors transition to teaching within online contexts and experiment with new technologies, it is important to examine the significance of the mode and medium of teacher feedback in student perceptions, participation, and writing practices.     

Fostering critical thinking and reflection through blog‐mediated peer feedback

The introduction of digital literacy practices has created a tension in academia, with many academics challenging the view that critical thinking can be fostered on social networks. A quasi‐experimental study was conducted on two sections of university‐level writing classrooms to determine if there were meaningful differences in the quality of writing and peer feedback generated through in‐class draft workshops using traditional methods as compared to draft workshops using a blogging platform. The results indicated that blogs produced a higher quality of writing as measured by grades, f(42) = 11.512, p < .002 and acceptance scores, f(42) = 8.364, p < .006. Furthermore, blog‐mediated peer workshops produced a statistically significantly higher number of critical comments, f(42) = 120.438, p < .000; and directive comments, f(42) = 33.861, p < .000. There were no statistically significant differences in the number of editing comments, f(42) = .001, p < .974, and traditional draft workshops produced a statistically significant higher number of naïve comments, f(42) = 14.119, p < .001. Within the study, critical comments were found to correlate positively with learning outcomes, b = 1.115, t(41) = 2.716, p < .01. The findings suggest that blogging software improved learner performance and fostered complex literacy skills.     

Examining students’ online interaction in a live video streaming environment using data mining and text mining

This study analyses the online questions and chat messages automatically recorded by a live video streaming (LVS) system using data mining and text mining techniques. We apply data mining and text mining techniques to analyze two different datasets and then conducted an in-depth correlation analysis for two educational courses with the most online questions and chat messages respectively. The study found the discrepancies as well as similarities in the students’ patterns and themes of participation between online questions (student–instructor interaction) and online chat messages (student–students interaction or peer interaction). The results also identify disciplinary differences in students’ online participation. A correlation is found between the number of online questions students asked and students’ final grades. The data suggests that a combination of using data mining and text mining techniques for a large amount of online learning data can yield considerable insights and reveal valuable patterns in students’ learning behaviors. Limitations with data and text mining were also revealed and discussed in the paper.     

The effects of social messaging on students' learning and intrinsic motivation in peer assessment

This study aims to gain a better understanding of how the newly arisen social messaging may impact the practice of peer assessment. Seventy-nine ESL (English as second language) students reviewed each other's English essays in three peer assessment groups: a three-member group using wiki (wiki group), a three-member group using social messaging (small messaging group), and a six-member group using social messaging (big messaging group). Data analysis suggested that peer assessment facilitated by social messaging can be at least of the same effectiveness as wiki-facilitated peer assessment on ESL students' writing skills and intrinsic motivation. In addition, the findings indicated that students in the small messaging group outperformed students in the big messaging group on essay writing and reported a significantly higher rating on perceived competence, a positive indicator of the behavioural measures of intrinsic motivation, than students in the big messaging group.     

Assessing the effects of interactive blogging on student attitudes towards peer interaction,learning motivation,and academic achievements

Blogs have been increasingly used to supplement traditional classroom lectures in higher education. This paper explores the use of blogs, and how student attitudes towards online peer interaction and peer learning, as well as motivation to learn from peers, may differ when using the blog comments feature, and when students are encouraged to read and comment on each other's work. We contrast two ways blogs affect learning engagement: (1) solitary blogs as personal digital portfolios for writers; or (2) blogs used interactively to facilitate peer interaction by exposing blogging content and comments to peers. A quasi‐experiment was conducted across two semesters, involving 154 graduate and undergraduate students. The result suggests that interactive blogs, compared with isolated blogs, are associated with positive attitudes towards academic achievement in course subjects and in online peer interaction. Students showed positive motivation to learn from peer work, regardless of whether blogs were interactive or solitary.     

Applying social bookmarking to collective information searching (CIS): An analysis of behavioral pattern and peer interaction for co-exploring quality online resources

With the advancement of Web 2.0 applications, this study aims to advocate that social bookmarking (SB) applications could support mutual exchange of finding information in a manner of collective information searching (CIS). A social bookmarking system, namely ‘WeShare,’ was developed, and conducted with 127 junior high school students for performing the given assignment in this study. The participants’ activities of collecting and reviewing relevant information were traced by log data for later analysis. To initially unveil the participants’ behaviors in the use of social bookmarking for co-exploring the Internet resources, this study proposed some quantitative indicators to represent students’ personal contributions (‘Bookmarks from the Internet,’ ‘Bookmarks from WeShare,’ ‘Annotations on personal bookmarks,’ ‘Comments on others’ bookmarks’) and peer feedback (‘The number of bookmarks collected by peers,’ ‘The number of bookmarks commented on by peers,’ ‘The number of comments from peers’). By the method of cluster analysis, some behavioral patterns regarding how participants collectively search the Internet by use of WeShare were identified. Furthermore, the findings suggest that personal contributions to citing and commenting on peers’ bookmarks are important to the advancement of collective information searching activities for finding quality information on the Internet.     

Toward a Complexity of Online Learning: Learners in Online First-Year Writing

In response to the growing presence of online first-year writing courses, this paper describes a case study of two online first-year writing courses and addresses the questions: What do students in an online first-year writing course perceive as good study habits, and what helps them succeed? Data includes surveys, online discussions, course management statistics, and selected interviews. The study is supported by social cognitive theory described by psychologist Albert Bandura; this methodology allows for examination of internal, external, and behavioral characteristics of participating students. Results of the study indicate that students who rated themselves as making good use of study time also succeeded in the course. Insights from students include information about study activities, management of study time, access to technology, and attitudes about online courses. A surprising result of the study was that students did not consider communication with peers as a productive study activity, despite a deliberate attempt by instructors to build peer interaction into the course. Yet students also reported high levels of engagement and positive attitudes about online learning. The social cognitive lens provides helpful insights about these complex findings by examining the external, internal, and behavioral aspects of online first-year writing students in this study.     

E-portfolios supporting primary students' writing performance and peer feedback

E-portfolios show great promise for supporting students' writing performance and facilitating peer feedback, but empirical research of their use in primary education is limited. To address this gap, a yearlong study was conducted in a 4th grade primary class in Cyprus implementing e-portfolios (n = 20) to help students document their progress and send feedback to peers. A generic, open source weblog tool localized into Greek was used as an e-portfolio tool. Data sources included 176 student-essays, 1306 instances of peer feedback, students pre- and post-tests on writing performance, nine videotaped student interviews and one teacher interview. A paired samples t-test analysis showed that there was a statistically significant difference between students' pre-test (M = 62.6, SD = 9.82, n = 20) and post-test (M = 76.5, SD = 12.6, n = 20) on writing performance (t (19) = −8.03, p < .01). A repeated measures analysis of variance on e-portfolio artifacts showed that there were learning gains with respect to students' writing performance over time [F(4.01, 76.25) = 31.59, p < .01, η² = 0.89]. A qualitative analysis of students' comments showed that students provided more thorough peer feedback over time and became gradually more capable of providing corrective feedback. The qualitative analysis of student interviews provided evidence that students valued peer feedback in their portfolios. The analysis of the teacher interview showed that average and high-ability students benefited the most from peer feedback. This study provided evidence that e-portfolios can support the development of students' writing performance and peer feedback skills in the context of primary school essay writing. Instructional implications for portfolio implementation are offered.     

Streaming video to enhance students’ reflection in dance education

This paper presents an evaluation case study that describes the experiences of 15 students and 2 teachers using a video-based learning environment, DiViDU, to facilitate students’ daily reflection activities in a composition course and a ballet course. To support dance students’ reflection processes streaming video was applied as follows: video editing and viewing for facilitating students in describing their practice; writing online self-assessments about the experiences captured on video to support students in evaluating their practice; online peer-feedback activities concerning the recorded practice for facilitating students in learning from multiple perspectives. In the composition course eight students reflected on their choreographic work, which was performed by their peer students. In the ballet course seven students reflected on themselves practicing the ballet technique. Data about the streaming video facilitation were collected after the completion of the reflection assignments using semi-structured interviews. The results revealed that students in both courses considered steaming video as effective for carrying out self-evaluations. The usefulness of video and online peer-feedback for other reflection processes differed among the courses in students’ view. The teachers considered streaming video generally useful for all the reflection processes of their students; however they also indicated some shortcomings.     

Peer Review via Three Modes in an EFL Writing Course

In the past few decades, the integration of virtual peer review has been implemented as an instructional procedure in second-language writing courses. Previous studies have been interested in comparing the effects of different communication modes and have endeavored to find out which mode is most effective. This paper reports a study examining how a combination of three modes (face-to-face, synchronous, and asynchronous CMC) influenced and might benefit students’ peer review. The results indicate that the affordance of the three modes influenced students’ task engagement, comment categories, and perception of peer review. The results further suggest that a combination of different modes in the multiple-draft process may benefit peer review and satisfy individual preferences towards the mode for peer review. The results imply that arranging various modes appropriately at different stages of drafting and customizing peer review training in using these modes may maximize the effects of peer review in the writing process.     

Young people’s digital lives: The impact of interpersonal relationships and digital media use on adolescents’ sense of identity

The current study investigates the joint effects of interpersonal relationships and digital media use on adolescents’ sense of identity. Questionnaires were administered to a sample of 2079 students (57% female) between the ages of 11 and 19 years (M = 15.4 years) attending one of seven secondary schools in Bermuda. Using structural equation modeling, the author found that mothers and friends play an important role in adolescents’ lives, with both relationships contributing in positive ways to respondents’ self-concept clarity. Further, the results showed that mother relationship quality affected adolescents’ self-concept clarity both directly and indirectly, through the positive impact it had on friendship quality. Friends also played a mediating role in relation to aspects of adolescents’ digital media use. Specifically, the negative association detected between online identity expression/exploration and self-concept clarity was mediated partially by low friendship quality. Going online to communicate with one’s friends appeared to play a more positive role in adolescents’ sense of identity. The results showed that online peer communication affected self-concept clarity indirectly through its positive impact on friendship quality.