Does shifting the structuring degree of the peer assessment process influence students’ peer feedback content?

The present study examines the added value of structuring the peer assessment process for students’ peer feedback content in a wiki environment in higher education, by providing a peer feedback template with a varying structuring degree. After writing a draft version of an academic abstract, each student was engaged as assessor to provide peer feedback to one fixed and non-reciprocal peer on a similar performance. The present study was conducted in the 1st year of a university course in Instructional Sciences (N=176) and more specifically compared three conditions: no structure peer feedback (control), basic structure peer feedback, and elaborate structure peer feedback condition. As feedback content is a crucial element for feedback effectiveness, quantitative content analysis of students’ (n=41) peer feedback messages was performed, which revealed some discrepancies between the conditions regarding the proportion of peer feedback content categories: (1) peer feedback style, (2) verification type, (3) verification focus, (4) elaboration type, and (5) elaboration focus. Regarding peer feedback style, results revealed that all conditions provide a reasonably balanced proportion of verifications and elaborations in their peer feedback messages. Providing a basic structure appears to expand the proportion of elaborations significantly, compared to students who receive no further structure. Regarding verification type and focus, all students provide typically positive and general verifications that are focused on particular criteria. The elaborate structure condition provides significantly more negative verifications compared to the basic structure condition. When students receive no structure at all, a majority of the verification segments tend to be positive and focused on the overall assignment and on language aspects. While all conditions have slightly more suggestive than informative elaborations, no significant differences were found between the conditions regarding elaboration type. Finally, the elaborate structure condition showed to have a significantly higher proportion of general elaborations that are focused on particular criteria, compared to students who receive less structure in the PA process. This study illustrated how a practical instructional intervention in the feedback process can increase the potential impact of peer assessment and boost students’ learning in higher education.