PeerStudio: Rapid Peer Feedback Emphasizes Revision and Improves Performance

Abstract

Rapid feedback is a core component of mastery learning, but feedback on open-ended work requires days or weeks in most classes today. This paper introduces PeerStudio, an assessment platform that leverages the large number of students' peers in online classes to enable rapid feedback on in-progress work. Students submit their draft, give rubric-based feedback on two peers' drafts, and then receive peer feedback. Students can integrate the feedback and repeat this process as often as they desire. In MOOC deployments, the median student received feedback in just twenty minutes. Rapid feedback on in-progress work improves course outcomes: in a controlled experiment, students' final grades improved when feedback was delivered quickly, but not if delayed by 24 hours. More than 3,600 students have used PeerStudio in eight classes, both massive and in-person. This research demonstrates how large classes can leverage their scale to encourage mastery through rapid feedback and revision.