Effects of technology enhanced peer, teacher and self-feedback on students’ collaborative writing, critical thinking tendency and engagement in learning

Abstract

Peer, teacher, and self-feedback have been widely applied in English writing courses in higher education. However, few studies have used technology to activate the potential of feedback in project-based collaborative learning or discussed how technology-enhanced peer, teacher and self-feedback may assist students’ writing, promote their critical thinking tendency, or enhance their engagement in learning, so we investigated them in this research. A total of 90 students, 30 in each group, participated in it. They reported their progress at four stages every other week, received peer, teacher, and self-feedback respectively for 10 weeks, and submitted their finalized review articles in week 14. Before the treatment, we evaluated the students’ writing proficiency and critical thinking tendency through a pre-test and a pre-questionnaire survey. After the treatment, we evaluated their collaborative writing products and conducted a post-questionnaire survey to measure their critical thinking tendency and behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement in learning. The results indicated that technology-enhanced peer and teacher feedback were significantly more effective than self-feedback in assisting collaborative writing; peer and self-feedback were significantly more effective than teacher feedback in promoting critical thinking tendency, enhancing behavioral and emotional engagement in learning; and teacher feedback was significantly more effective than self-feedback in enhancing cognitive engagement in learning. We also conducted semi-structured interviews to investigate their perception of the three feedback types and the technology-enhanced feedback-assisted collaborative writing experience. Most students enjoyed the writing experience and regarded the use of digital tools effective for its implementation. Based on these results, we suggest that teachers implement more technology-enhanced peer and self-feedback assisted collaborative writing.