Dr Richardson's Peer Feedback in Online Discussions

This presentation was about peer feedback in online discussions on Web-CT that happened in 2004 at Purdue. There is Ertmer et al. (2007) already published about this study.

It is true that there are a lot of benefits from online discussions for students: Creating interactive online community, scaffolding learning, enhancing feedback, increasing social skills, increasing satisfaction, strengthening persistence in distance programs, strengthening teamwork. Most of these are supported by social constructivist viewpoints. These benefits are possible from student’s active participation (students cannot hide), exposure to diverse perspectives and chances to compare viewpoints. However, there are some “costs” from instructor’s perspective. He/she has to monitor and supervise activities and give corrective feedback. Peer feedback does not “scale” for courses. In short, it implies a lot of work for the teacher, and it is valuable to consider student feedback for teachers’ purposes.

One conclusion from the study is that students’ giving feedback is a good learning process for students rather than receiving feedback from peers. (When receiving feedback, it seems that students do not really care what other people think about them.) This finding supports establishment of validity of peer feedback.

But my comment is that their feedback includes peer evaluations on the scale. I think without the performance scale, students’ reactions to the study might have been different. Peer feedback is not a normal activity in every day life. The evaluation scale (poor, neutral, and good) might have made this peer feedback an even more unusual activity for participants.

As my personal experience of participating “online discussions,” I know they were motivating and scaffolding activities. So, in the future as a teacher, I would like to use peer feedback in my teaching class. I think I learned how to explain benefits of online peer discussions or feedback to others from this presentation. Also, I think it is important to be aware that, as Dr. Richardson said, online discussions may be useful as a “supplement” to other main activities.

Shigetake