Digitally supported peer feedback has emerged as a powerful tool for enhancing student learning due to students’ continuous need for more feedback. In contrast to written teacher feedback, peer feedback’s dialogic nature has proven to be beneficial because it creates a collaborative and involving learning experience among students (Nicol, 2010).
Comparing and actively critiquing other students’ work sparks an internal feedback process in the person giving feedback. Studies have shown that most of the learning derives from the reviewing process and not only the comments that students receive from their peers
(Nicol & McCallum, 2022).
With large classes, it can be difficult for the educator to reach each individual student and have a dialogue about misconceptions or improvements in the assignment. But by involving students as active constructors in the feedback process, each student can receive tailored and specific feedback (Nicol, 2010).
You can use the peer feedback loop as a framework for designing your peer feedback activity. It involves the following activities:
Introduction to process and criteria.
The educator introduces the feedback process, assignment and criteria including the value of peer feedback to students learning to successfully engage students in the activity.
Recap and reflection.
Students reflect and act on the feedback they receive. The educator should facilitate exercises either online or in-class that help students reflect on the feedback they have received and what they have read in other students' submissions to make sure the feedback resonates.
Peer feedback.
Students give and receive feedback from each other. In this stage, the educator should remind students of the assignment criteria and what is expected of the feedback they give to each other by e.g. showing examples of good and bad feedback. If the feedback is given digitally, the educator can follow along in the feedback process and make quality checks of random feedback samples.
Assignment creation and submission.
Students create an artifact while the educator is available for questions. If the hand-in is done digitally, the educator can check the number of incoming submissions and perform quality samples of student products.
These four integral processes form four phases, each demanding the presence and guidance of the educator to ensure a well-scaffolded and enriched learning experience. Digitally supported peer feedback allows the feedback loop to occur onsite and online.
Here is an example of two common feedback loops:
Outline:
The initial phase of the feedback process unfolds during a classroom lecture. Subsequently, students engage in the process by writing an answer to the proposed assignment at home in between classes. During the next classroom session, students give feedback to each other’s assignments while the educator or a teaching assistant is present.
Instructor role:
The presence of the educator in-class gives students the opportunity to ask questions while reviewing and thereby ensure their input and comments are correct.
Tip:
After the feedback process, students are asked to reflect on the feedback they have received and what they have learnt from reading each other’s assignments. These self-reflections take place both at home and during the upcoming classroom lecture to make sure the feedback is used and connect the learning experience to practice.
Outline:
The introductory part begins out-of-class to free up time for students to craft their submission during the classroom lecture. Feedback is now given in-between classes, and students meet again for a discussion about adjustments to their assignment during the classroom lecture. Evaluation of the entire process is be done either in extension of students reflecting on the feedback they have received or out-of-class.
Instructor role:
Furthermore, this approach keeps the educator present and engaged throughout the feedback loop by being directly involved in assisting students with their submission and offering insights during the review process.
Tip:
While all parts of the feedback loop potentially could take place online, out-of-class, it is pivotal to allocate dedicated in-class time for certain elements of this process in order to support and scaffold the learning activity. Doing so, students will likely be more motivated to participate and not feel the activity is extra-curricular outside class time.
With today's learning technology that supports the entire feedback loop, the responsibility of the educator lies in planning the activity, closely tracking students' progression, facilitating the processes and providing overall feedback to students. The educator can e.g., perform a sample check of submissions and student feedback to highlight what works well and what needs improvement. By doing so, students receive individual feedback from each other and general feedback from the educator on both their submissions and the feedback they give. Peer feedback is often touted as time-efficient, but it is noteworthy that educators invest equally as much time planning and scaffolding the feedback process as elaborated more in detail in the subsequent table:
1. Introduction process and criteria | 2. Assignment creation & submission hand-in | 3. Peer feedback | 4. Recap and reflection |
| Students get introduced to the assignment, the feedback process and practice giving feedback. | Students create their response to the proposed assignment. | Students give feedback to each other. | Students reflect on their feedback and evaluate the feedback they have received. |
Educator tasks | |||
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At Aarhus University, instructors can use a tool named FeedbackFruits to facilitate peer feedback processes. This tool is accessible through your course in Brightspace. In FeedbackFruits, educators can set up and customize their feedback loop on several parameters such as anonymity, number of reviews, rubrics, student grouping, and more. It is also in FeedbackFruits that students review each other's submissions.
Read more about FeedbackFruits on AU Educate.
Most of today's online learning technologies that support peer feedback processes enforce several configuration options that affect the didactical decisions and the process's flow. You can setup a peer feedback loop in FeedbackFruits, where you can use some of the following attributes via Brightspace. You can also read more about FeedbackFruits and get technical guides on how to use it.
Peer feedback-loop in FeedbackFruits | |
| File formats | Students can submit artifacts like text, audio, video, and web links. Technology today allows for different artifacts besides regular text assignments like essays, synopsis, presentations, and reports. Having students supplement their text with other forms of media can stimulate students’ creativity and produce innovative expressions of their ideas. By allowing students to e.g., hand in a video presentation instead of a written text, students can practice pitches presentations and oral exam situations. |
| Anonymity | While anonymity can aid students in overcoming the fear of committing themselves to their statements and comments, its applicability in the context of their future professions might be questioned. Research, however, shows that anonymity helps students give more honest and critical reviews (Lu & Bol, 2007). Anonymity can also help to mitigate bias. Students might unknowingly be biased in their evaluation and review of other students' work due to personal preferences, friendships, and relations. Gradually reducing anonymity throughout the semester can help students in providing unbiased feedback while at the same time preparing them for a future outside the university. |
| Individual or group-based feedback loop | The educator must define whether submissions are made individually or as a group. Only one of the two options can be chosen per peer feedback assignment.
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| Allocation of submissions and reviews |
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| Visibility of submissions | All submissions can be made visible for the entire group of students, and thereby spark students’ curiosity and give insights to how the proposed assignment has been solved by not only the allocated reviewers but by other students of interest. |
| Number of reviews | Multiple reviews can be exhausting for students; therefore, the number of reviews needs to match the size of the assignment and the expected amount of feedback. However, the value of peer feedback lies in giving feedback to other students as students view, analyse, and critically assess each other's assignments. More than one review allows students to view several other perspectives on how to solve the proposed assignment (Cho & Schunn, 2007). |
| Rubrics and feedback questions |
Both feedback options can be used at the same time on a peer feedback assignment. |
| Automated Feedback Coach | The educator can enable an AI-powered automatic feedback coach that comments on the feedback that students provide each other while they write. The coach indicatives how their feedback will be perceived by the submission’s author and suggests changes to the student’s “tone of voice”, which can help students improve the quality of the feedback. The automated feedback coach reads and understands Danish and English, but only provides feedback in English. It is based on OpenAIs large language models but does not interact or exchange data with ChatGPT because the model is a local installation made by FeedbackFruits. Student inputs are not used to train, retrain or adjust the model in any way. |
More loosely facilitated peer feedback can occur in Brightspace Discussions by having students share a smaller text like, e.g., a problem statement that others can reply to or using Groups in Brightspace to share documents. Students can also invite each other into Office 365-documents for in-line text comments.
