Improving student peer feedback
Abstract
Instructors use peer feedback to afford students multiple assessments of their work and to help them acquire important lifelong skills. However, research finds that this type of feedback has questionable validity, reliability, and accuracy, and instructors consider much of it too uncritical, superficial, vague, and content-focused, among other things. This article posits that the typical judgment-based feedback questions give students emotionally charged tasks that they are cognitively ill equipped to perform well and that permit laxness. It then introduces an alternative that encourages neutral, informative, and thorough responses that add genuine value to the peer feedback process.
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The quality of feedback depends not only on students' skills, but also on the feedback questions that students are asked.
“As Nilson (2003) noticed the quality of feedback does not only depend on student's skills, but also the feedback questions that students are asked.”
From Using learning analytics to understand student perceptions of peer feedback (2021) · cites this paper as Nilson (2003)
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Using learning analytics to understand student perceptions of peer feedback
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Japanese L2 learners’ translanguaging practice in written peer feedback
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- Authors
- Nilson, L. B.
- Affiliations
- Clemson University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Nilson, Linda B.
- ORCID
- Nilson, Linda B.
- Venue
- College Teaching
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2003-01
- Volume
- 51
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 34-38
- ISSN
- 1930-8299 (ISSN-L)
- 8756-7555
- OpenAlex
- W2006996167
- Cited by
- 172
- References
- 27
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 35 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 1 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 5.84
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- College Teaching (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Student Assessment and Feedback
- Social Sciences › Education › Evaluation of Teaching Practices
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Innovative Teaching and Learning Methods
- Keywords
- peer feedback, peer assessment, student self-assessment, feedback quality, university teaching
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