Peer-to-peer dialogue about teachers’ written feedback enhances students’ understanding on how to improve writing skills

Abstract

Academic writing is a complex competence in higher education. To develop this competence, teachers’ written feedback is vital, especially if it contains feed-up, feed-back and feed-forward information. However, academic writing does not always improve after provision of written feedback. The purpose of this study was to explore if peer-to-peer dialogue between students about teachers’ written feedback does enhance students’ understanding of written feedback. Sixty-three second-year university students participated in a pre-test-post-test design with mixed methods. Questionnaire data showed that peer-to-peer dialogue increased students’ understanding of feed-up, feed-back and feed-forward information. Focus group data demonstrated that the dialogue helped students to understand the assessment criteria better (feed up) and offered suggestions for improvement (feed forward). High quality teachers’ written feedback was perceived as an important condition. Peer-to-peer dialogue among students about teachers’ written feedback seems promising in enhancing students’ understanding on how to improve their academic writing assignments.