Design, implementation, and evaluation of an online supported peer feedback module to enhance students’ argumentative essay quality
Open accessAbstract
We know little to what extent peer feedback strategies can be applied on a large scale in higher education for complex tasks. This study aimed to design, implement, and evaluate an online-supported peer feedback module for large-scale use to enhance higher education students’ argumentative essay writing performance. To do this, 330 students from five different courses at bachelor and master levels followed the online supported peer feedback module. In this module, students were asked to write an argumentative essay about a controversial issue, provide peer feedback for two peers, and revise their original essays based on the received feedback. Three types of data including original essay (pre-test) data, peer feedback data, and revised essay (post-test) data collected. Students also filled out the learning satisfaction questionnaire at the end of the module. The findings showed that the suggested online-supported peer feedback module was effective in improving students’ argumentative essay quality in all courses at the bachelor and master levels. The findings also showed there is a difference in the level of students’ satisfaction with the module among the courses and between the education levels. The findings of this study provide insights into and add value to the scalability of online peer feedback tools for argumentative essay writing in different contexts. Based on the findings, recommendations for future studies and educational practice are provided.
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“Students’ feedback is typically not well-founded with solid arguments and it mostly focuses on personal qualities rather than instructional qualities and learning goals (Hattie & Timperley, 2007).”
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“, 2022; Shute, 2008), which means that peer feedback activities, regardless of their types, encourage students to be involved in critical and active collaborative learning with peers on a specific topic where higher-order activities such as criticizing, reflecting, analyzing, and evaluating are often used (Liu & Carle…”
Improving the effectiveness of peer feedback for learning
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“The quality of feedback provided by students is uneven (Nilson, 2003) as students’ expertise in and experiences with providing feedback are varied (Gielen et al., 2010).”
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“In addition, while our study expands our understanding of peer feedback impacts on students’ argumentation competence in essay writing, we did not dig into the impacts of the feedback features (Patchan et al., 2016 ; Wu & Schunn, 2020) on students’ argu-mentative essay writing performance.”
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Noroozi, O., Banihashem, S. K., Biemans, H. J. A., Smits, M., Vervoort, M. T. W., & Verbaan, C.-L.
- Affiliations
- Wageningen University & Research (NL)
- Open University of the Netherlands (NL)
- Corresponding author
- Banihashem, Seyyed Kazem
- Venue
- Education and Information Technologies
- Published
- 2023-03-15
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 12757-12784
- ISSN
- 1360-2357 (ISSN-L)
- 1573-7608
- PMC
- PMC10015529
- OpenAlex
- W4324381756
- Cited by
- 83
- References
- 19
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 13 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 60.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Education and Information Technologies (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Socio-Environmental Systems Modeling (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DSpace (Open University in the Netherlands) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Student Assessment and Feedback
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Innovative Teaching and Learning Methods
- Social Sciences › Education › Evaluation of Teaching Practices
- Keywords
- peer feedback, argumentative essay writing, essay quality, scalability, university students, writing revision, student satisfaction, controversial issues
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