As part of the constructivist approach of education, feedback is considered to be a key component of the learning and assessment activities for the reflective construction of knowledge. This lies in a transformed role for students in feedback in targeting, generating and interpreting feedback and in communicating and engaging with it (Hounsell 2007). This method includes qualitative comments involving groups of students or peers and benefits students’ learning by increasing accountability, encouraging reflection and assessing their own or peers performance, and by developing evaluative expertise.
Regarding the benefits of feedback for students’ learning, the paper aims to analyze the role of feedback provided by peers for the students’ learning process considering the cognitive and metacognitive aspects, affective and social skills. The innovative experience is based on the use of collaborative assignments in one subject at the Faculty of Education. The practice is implemented during the course 2016-2017 at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in the first course of four graduate programs: teacher education, childhood education, social education and pedagogy.
The objectives are:
- Analyse the students’ perception on the role of feedback on their learning process
- Describe the impact have on both assessor and assesses in the peer feedback process
Among the different types of feedback, peer-feedback appears as especially beneficial for the students’ learning (Boud 1995; Falchikov 2001). Peer-feedback is provided by equal status learners and can be regarded both as a form of formative assessment, the counterpart of teacher feedback (Topping 1998), and as a form of collaborative learning (Van Gennip, Segers, & Tillema 2010; among others). Peer-feedback supports the learning process by providing an intermediate check of the performance against the criteria, accompanied by feedback on strengths, weaknesses and/or suggestions for improvement (Falchikov 2001).
Peer-assessment has been a common practice in higher education involving an important change in assessment procedures (Gielen & De Wever, 2015, Nicol, Thomson, & Breslin, 2014).
In group contexts, opportunities for students to collaborate productively are being widened by emerging forms which can promote “a rich dialogue in relation to feedback and peer- and self-assessment activities which, by their nature, place the student at the centre of the educational process as an active participant in constructing knowledge” (Hatzipanagos & Warburton, 2009). Recent research, such as Li, Liu & Steckelber (2010) and Gielen & De Wevershow (2015) show that students enhance their learning experiences not only when they receive feedback but also when they give feedback to their peers.
In the study we understand the peer-feedback draw on social constructivism the joint construction of knowledge through discourse and other type of interactivity in where communication and social skills are implicit as proposed by Vygotsky (1978). The Vygotskian concept of scaffolded learning would presumably depend on whether the peer assessor merely identified weaknesses in the assessed work or also identified strengths or suggested how the work could be improved. In addition, we considered peer-feedback as related to the Piagetian model of cognitive conflict considering it in the process, involved students who have equal status (Sluijsmans et al. 2002, Ibarra, Rodríguez y Gómez, 2012) but who are differently competent, which implies a negotiation process between them and their knowledge (Wen & Tsai, 2006).
Specialized literature reveals that continuous assessment facilitates student learning, enables students to become active, responsible and reflective practitioners, improves the quality of learning and provides formal accountability and accreditation of knowledge (Quinton and Smallbone, 2013, Orsmond et al. 2000; among others).
Despite there is a wide variety of literature, there is still need for more in depth research on group feedback in collaborative settings.
