Overwhelmed receivers and overly ambitious providers: How the Impacts of peer comment features look different at receiver and provider levels of aggregation

Abstract

Although research has explored what makes peer feedback useful, few studies have compared perceived helpfulness with actual implementation during revision. Additionally, previous studies often analyze individual feedback comments in isolation, rather than considering the overall feedback received by receivers or provided by providers. The present study explored the relationship between various comment features and their perceived helpfulness and implementation, predicting different relationships on the basis of an adapted Student-Feedback Interaction Model. The study also assessed whether these relationships exhibited aggregation effects at the levels of receiver or provider, predicting effects based upon cognitive/workload theory. Peer feedback data were analyzed from 844 students engaged in online peer feedback, who also evaluated the helpfulness of received comments. Comments were coded for suggestions, explanations, being long, and being implemented in a revision. Relationships with perceived helpfulness and implementation were examined at the individual comment, receiver, and provider levels. Multiple regressions showed that perceived helpfulness was predicted by comment length and the presence of suggestions whereas comment implementation was predicted by length and the presence of explanations, supporting the adapted model. In addition, feedback receivers appeared to be overwhelmed by receiving too many suggestions when judging helpfulness, and feedback providers appeared to provide less helpful explanations for revision when attempting to provide many explanations. These findings suggest that simply recommending greater use of feedback styles found helpful at the individual comment level may produce counter-productive effects for both feedback receivers and providers.