An Integrated Approach to Feedback: Automated, Peer, and Teacher Feedback for Improvement in Writing

Abstract

The importance of feedback in learning has been widely acknowledged in the education enterprise. However, due to the usually large ratio between teachers and students in real classrooms, teachers often find themselves struggling to offer timely quality feedback that is much needed for meaningful learning. In a communication class in SIT, for example, the number of students can be as high as 25 (and this number is even higher in other modules), which makes it difficult for the instructors to give in-depth feedback on their assignments. Such a high ratio of teacher to students frequently leads to either mediocre feedback given to students or instructors’ burn-out, which is detrimental to students’ learning or the well-being of the teachers. To overcome this problem, this project proposes to shift some of this burden from the teacher to an automated writing evaluation (AWE) tool and peer learning via an integrated approach to feedback.

In this project, we will use AcaWriter which is an AI-based AWE tool that can offer genre-specific feedback and suggest improvements on the rhetorical moves of the texts, in combination with peer and teacher feedback. AcaWriter provides immediate feedback that helps students learn how to improve on the rhetorical structure and genre appropriacy of their texts, while peer feedback helps students in understanding how their texts are perceived by others and learning to negotiate meanings in this process. These two feedback channels only help shoulder some of the teachers’ burden but also enrich students’ learning experience through exposure to various aspects of feedback. Teachers can then use their much-limited time to focus on more in-depth feedback, such as on the critical thinking aspects of the texts. Such quality feedback, again, benefit students in their learning.

In this project, we will evaluate the effectiveness of this integrated approach to feedback in enhancing students’ writing skills and overall learning experience. We hypothesize that this integrated approach to feedback will benefit both teachers and students, leading to a more satisfying experience of teaching and learning. This project also serves as a trial run of the use of a technological aid (i.e, the AWE tool) through an integrated pedagogical design, in enriching the teaching and learning activities in SIT.