Online peer feedback via Moodle forum: Implications for longitudinal feedback design and feedback quality

Abstract

This study experimented with four design elements and examined their impact on feedback quality—anonymizing feedback writers, providing teacher-made rubrics and a feedback template, and making feedback traceable. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design and involved 75 undergraduates who produced 362 feedback entries on peers' presentations over eight weeks. The feedback comments were scored against detailed rubrics of feedback quality, focusing on nine features grouped under ideational, interpersonal, and textual dimensions according to the functional linguistics perspective. The scores were analyzed using a two-way repeated measures ANOVA to compare the experimental and the control groups' overall performance and week-by-week changes. The results were complex and mixed. Anonymity encouraged feedback writers to be more critical but negatively affected the interpersonal dimension of their writing. Providing templates and rubrics assisted them in the ideational dimension and enabled them to write from multiple aspects. Making feedback traceable helped them learn accumulatively from past efforts. Overall, the design elements substantially improved feedback quality in the first two weeks; however, their advantages diminished over time. In the eighth week, the two groups’ feedback became similar in quality. The study provides new insights for research and practice, highlighting the need to reassess and modify feedback design for longitudinal and routinized feedback activities.