Instructor vs Peer Writing Feedback in a Large First-Year Engineering Course

Over the past 40 years, developments in writing studies research have emphasized the importance of both process-orientation - incorporation of scaffolding through feedback and revision - and situativity - recognizing that knowledge is best learned within the context it is to be applied. Engineering faculty, however, often view writing in ways at odds with both of these developments: treating writing as something to be taught elsewhere or integrating writing into engineering courses without incorporating feedback or revision. This mismatch is problematic, because improving engineering students’ writing is a critical problem for engineering education. Additionally, feedback is often unfeasible within the constraints of many engineering courses-instructor time and large student-faculty ratios. One potential way to address these concerns is to use peer feedback. An open question, however, is how instructor and peer feedback practices differ and how that difference impacts students' revising process. We present results of an empirical analysis of peer vs. instructor feedback on a writing assignment in a large first-year engineering course. Findings indicate that peer feedback was at least as effective as instructor feedback in terms of quality improvement and that trained peer reviewers give feedback that is more consistent with effective practices than untrained instructors.