Chang, Ching-Fen. “Peer Review via Three Modes in an EFL
Writing
Course.” Computers and Composition 29.1 (2012): 63-78. Science
Direct. Web. 7 Jun. 2012.
Chang studied how three formats of peer review—face-to-face,
asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC), and synchronous
CMC—influenced the effectiveness of student peer review. His results show that the affordances
of these three modes affected student perceptions, engagement with tasks, and
categories of comments regarding peer review. He argues that combining all three modes at different stages
in the writing process can maximize effectiveness for the most learners.
Early in his essay, Chang reviews literature on the purposes
and benefits of peer review, which include Tsui & Ng’s argument that it
enhances students’ sense of audience, improves their self-awareness of
strengths and weaknesses, and fosters collaboration and ownership of students’
writing (63). Some previous
studies (Tuzi, Guardado, and Shi) have found that online peer feedback tends to
focus more on local sentence-level issues when compared with F2F peer reviews,
but that with asynchronous online feedback, students “tended to balance both
positive and negative responses and provide specific suggestions for revision”
(64). When comparing F2F peer
review with various CMC modes, some of the research is mixed, with some studies
suggesting peer comments improve in CMC environments while others favor F2F
(64). In several studies, students
reported mixed preferences for peer review in the different modes, perceiving
different benefits from each (65).
Chang then goes on to pose three questions for his study relating to how
students “engage in peer review tasks via the three modes,” what comments are
generated from these modes, and how students “perceive the effectiveness of
peer review via the three modes?” (65).
To answer these questions, he conducted the study in a college-level
English writing course in Taiwan, using MSN instant messaging, Blackboard, and
F2F meetings—one for each draft of a multiple draft assignment. Chang describes in details the process
followed for each draft using the different modes and how the session
transcripts were coded afterward to define the results (66-68). One interesting result of the study was
that students tended to make more comments about local sentence-level issues in
asynchronous CMC mode when compared with either F2F or synchronous CMC, with
F2F generating the most global feedback, and students participated in more
clarification-oriented exchanges in F2F than either CMC mode (69-70). Students reported being more
comfortable giving critical feedback with the CMC modes as opposed to F2F
(72). In the end, students
reported conflicting perceptions of the different modes for peer review, but
most of them said that a mix of the three modes helped them gain a variety of
comments and accommodate different learning styles (73). The study also revealed that peer
reviewers emphasize different types of problems in each mode (74).
Hi, I recorded my comment on sound cloud: http://snd.sc/LkCKTX
ReplyDeleteJennifer - Thank you for reviewing this article; it came across my radar, but it was not one of the ones I eventually pursued hence my gratitude for your informative summary and comments. As a result of your recommendation, I've added it to my Diigo library for future reading.
ReplyDeleteAnd I definitely want to read it to get to some of the details that you cannot get into with a short review. I'm particularly interested in whether he discussed how he implements peer review in his courses; in other words, how does he structure peer review (questions to answer, rubric, forms or letters, etc.) and what kind of preparation does he give students (models, demonstrations, etc.), for those factors can affect what kind of feedback students give.
Your ideas for your own future work sound great. I hope to see the results someday!