Peer Feedback: Analysis of Feedback Interactions

• In Event: Channels of Feedback: Examining Sources, Types, and Contingencies

Abstract

Objectives and Theoretical Framework
The literature on assessment in higher education largely highlighted feedback's important role in promoting learning (Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Lipnevich & Smith, 2016, 2018). Feedback's role is to work towards closing a 'gap' between current performance and expected standards (Sadler 1989; Black and Wiliam 2009). Research demonstrates that peer feedback is particularly effective in improving student learning (Nicol, 2018, 2020). Despite the relevance of these topics in higher education, in the Italian context, there is still a lack of research and practice in this field.

There are different methods of categorizing feedback. Brown and Glover (2006) identify three feedback levels: offering information about performance, explaining expected standards, and enabling learners to self-regulate their learning. Orsmond and Merry's work (2011) identify nine categories in which "praise" is the most common. Hattie e Timperley (2007) identify four feedback foci: task, processing of the task, self-regulation, and personal feedback regarding self as a person. Hughes, Smith, e Creese (2014) create a framework that identifies five categories: praise, recognizing progress, critique, advice, clarification requests, or queries. This paper presents an empirical research work exploring feedback types in a peer review scenario at the University of Padova, in Italy, using peers as the main feedback providers instead of teachers.
Method and Data Sources
Forty-one master's students participated in an online peer review on the Moodle platform as part of their assignment. In groups of three, they produced a research report and then reviewed other groups' reports by offering feedback to them, from whom they received feedback too. Spontaneous student interactions within each group were coded using content analysis while students were preparing the feedback to give to their peers, and after receiving that one prepared by their peers, in both cases thinking about the possible changes for their report. This unit of analysis allowed us to investigate the use of feedback and the processes, reflections, and self-feedback elaborated by students in their dialogues.
Results
Seven categories of feedback messages were identified: feedback on the structure of the assignment, corrections on the content, praise, identification of areas for improvement, analysis of processes carried out, identifications of minor mistakes, and transfer. Coding online conversations highlighted students' reflection on the use of feedback given to and received by peers, allowing identifying strategies to suggest to classmates how to improve but also to resonate with ways to enhance their work.
Scientific Significance
This framework will be applied in the future to a larger sample to validate these categories. Moreover, these categories will also be interpreted in the light of Panadero and Lesnevich's (2022) "pedagogical" thematic area, which focuses on how to implement and present feedback, so it has a learning impact. Implications for practice will also be discussed with specific reference to educational design to elicit feedback processes and impacts, especially for Italian and non-Anglo-Saxon countries where the feedback tradition is less affirmed.

Authors

• Anna Serbati, University of Trento
  Presenting Author

• Federica Picasso, University of Trento
  Non-Presenting Author

• Beatrice Doria, Università di Padova
  Non-Presenting Author

• Valentina Grion, University of Padua
  Non-Presenting Author