What barriers do students perceive to engagement with automated immediate formative feedback

Abstract

A small preliminary PhD research project used OpenEssayist, a web based automated writing evaluation (AWE) system designed to provide immediate formative feedback to students, to gain insights into how students use such systems. One of the themes which emerged from the data analysis was that most of the students on the module did not make use of OpenEssayist, which raised the question of why? Are there barriers to student use of immediate AWE feedback? The low uptake of use of OpenEssayist reflects the findings of (Attali, 2004), whose research on the Criterion AWE system found that 71% of students did not make use of the redrafting facilities of Criterion and were excluded from his data. All thirty (n = 30) students on the module subject of the preliminary research had the opportunity to use OpenEssayist, regardless of whether they participated in the research, only four students chose to do so. Two students who did not use OpenEssayist were interviewed. The first did not use OpenEssayist for technical reasons, the second did not have enough time to learn about the software. It is not known why the other students did not make use of OpenEssayist. This short paper reports on the preliminary findings of non-use of AWE and outlines how that has led to a research question for a PhD project, which is a work-in-progress. The question is: Are there barriers to student use of immediate AWE feedback?.