The impact of formative peer feedback on higher education students’ academic writing: a Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Peer feedback is frequently implemented with academic writing tasks in higher education. However, a quantitative synthesis is still lacking for the impact that peer feedback has on students' writing performance. The current study conveyed two types of observations. First, regarding the impact of peer feedback on writing performance, this study synthesized the results of 24 quantitative studies reporting on higher education students' academic writing performance after peer feedback. Engagement in peer feedback resulted in larger writing improvements compared to (no-feedback) controls (g ¼ 0.91 [0.41, 1.42]) and compared to self-assessment (g ¼ 0.33 [0.01, 0.64]). Peer feedback and teacher feedback resulted in similar writing improvements (g ¼ 0.46 [-0.44, 1.36]). The nature of the peer feedback significantly moderated the impact that peer feedback had on students' writing improvement, whereas only a theoretically plausible, though non-significant moderating pattern was found for the number of peers that students engaged with. Second, this study shows that the number of well-controlled studies into the effects of peer feedback on writing is still low, indicating the need for more quantitative, methodologically sound research in this field. Findings and implications are discussed both for higher education teaching practice and future research approaches and directions.

Enhancing female adolescents' engagement in Physical Education classes through video-based peer feedback

“…For this reason, peer-assisted learning strategies could interfere as effective ways to help students receive feedback, instructions, and reinforcement from their classmates more frequently than a teacher could provide (S. E. Carr et al, 2016). Peer feedback is provided by equal status learners and can be regarded as a form of formative assessment -the counterpart of teacher feedback (Huisman, Saab, van den Broek, & van Driel, 2019), and also as a form of collaborative learning (Van Gennip, Segers, & Tillema, 2010). In both cases, the learner expects an intermediate check of his performance against the criteria, accompanied by feedback on his strengths, weaknesses and/or tips for improvement (Aljadeff-Abergel, Peterson, Wiskirchen, Hagen, & Cole, 2017).…”

Improving Student Feedback Quality: A Simple Model Using Peer Review and Feedback Rubrics

“… 15 , 16 One method to achieve this is through student peer review, which places the student as an active participant in feedback to foster self-reflection and higher order thought processes such as knowledge application and problem solving 17 , 18 Student peer review has been shown to be an effective feedback approach such as to improve academic writing. 19 …”

Student Perception of Formative Peer Review

“…It is for this and many other reasons, peer review has been researched by many academics working in various subjects, especially in the field of English language training. Researchers addressed, for example, an array of issues linked to positive impact of peer review on enhancing students' writing skills (Bainbridge & Sandford-Couch, 2018;Huisman et al, 2019;Liu & Carless, 2006;Malyuga, 2009;Min, 2006;Mulder et al, 2014;Nicol, 2014). However, "student perceptions of formative peer review remain relatively understudied" (Mulder et al, 2014, 159), especially in the field of formative inclass oral peer review of presentations made by students or any other oral activities, e.g.…”

“…The definition of formative peer review is based on the definition of peer assessment by Topping (1998) and the definition of formative peer feedback for writing performance provided by Huisman et al (2019). In-class formative peer review is defined in our research as an arrangement whereby students communicate information to peers of similar status, which may contribute to the improvement of presentation, language or any other relevant skills of the student delivering a presentation.…”