Scaffolding Feedback in Writing Using an Online Marking Platform: A Case Study

Abstract

This article reports on the use of an online platform to support feedback providing in writing tasks for primary school teachers in Chile's educational system, and its evaluation in a real writing assessment task. Previous studies report on a lack of classroom writing tasks in Chile, with time costs being the main reason by which teachers avoid assessing students' writings. The platform was designed to reduce the time teachers spend providing feedback while at the same time it scaffolds aspects of feedback quality. A quasi-experimental case study was performed, in which feedback provided by a teacher through the platform was analyzed and compared with feedback carried out by the same teacher in a traditional way. The aspects compared were the time employed in producing the feedback, the quality of the feedback and the user experience in both formats. Results suggest that technology can effectively support the production of better quality feedback, although time savings were not observed.