Technology-Supported Peer Feedback in Higher Education: An Interactive Experience of Postgraduate Students

Abstract

Many online learning environments have been designed and developed to support peer feedback processes. Writing of Master’s thesis is a complex process, which requires several stages to produce a good writing product which encompasses a clear claim supported by argumentation, reasoning and evidence, acknowledgement of counter-arguments against the original claim, and integrations of the arguments and counter-arguments which could lead to a final conclusion on the issue. The aim of this study was to investigate the nature of online peer feedback and the extent of incorporating peer revisions on postgraduate students’ writing in the Master’s programme. This study constructed online peer feedback based on the Zone of Proximal Development Theory (Vygotsky, 1978) and Cognitive Apprenticeship Theory (Collins, 1991) which emphasise that peer interaction is significant to writing development and constructing knowledge through social sharing and communication, which involves six cumulative processes for externalizing knowledge.  Qualitative approach was employed to identify the patterns of online peer feedback. The primary data was collected through participant-generated thesis and focus group interview among six Master’s students between the ages of 22 to 35 registered in the Department of Language Education in the School of Education at a rural university in South Africa. The results of the study showed that the participants were able to produce feedback that addressed varied writing features focusing on content (idea development and organization) and language (vocabulary and style, structure and mechanics). The study offered a number of pedagogical implications for the implementation of online peer feedback in postgraduate programmes.