Pedagogical Strategies for Integrating AI and Human Feedback for Tertiary Student Groups during Collaborative Writing

Abstract

In Singapore's education landscape, especially in the tertiary level from junior colleges to universities, collaborative group work is a widely adopted pedagogical strategy, reflecting the Ministry of Education’s emphasis on developing teamwork and communication skills essential for academic and workplace success. More recently, the integration of AI-powered feedback tools for students has gained momentum under MOE’s EdTech Masterplan 2030. At the intersection of these two observations, there is an opportunity to support educators with evidence-based pedagogical strategies for integrating AI and human feedback to improve the outcomes of student groups. 

Grounded in actual practice and theoretical foundation, this project aims to examine how small groups collaboratively process, evaluate, and apply feedback from AI, peer, and teacher sources. It seeks to understand how AI-enhanced pedagogical designs, in terms of the source (AI or human) and sequence (AI-then-human, or human-then-AI) of feedback to students, influence students working in groups of 3 to 5 students per group. While there is substantial research on the use of AI-generated feedback in individual student writing, there remains a gap in understanding its role in group-based writing. This study addresses this gap by exploring how formative feedback (from multiple sources and sequenced differently) is integrated in group settings and how it influences students’ self-efficacy in writing, more commonly understood as writing confidence.