Although formative peer assessment (FPA) has become a prevailing learning activity in different educational settings, there are not enough suggestions on how to structure it with instructional supports in online environments to optimize its benefits. Therefore, this study aims to propose design guidelines for the development of an effective online…

If, as I argue, student-to-student peer review is animated by "improvement imperatives" that make peer review a form of what Lauren Berlant calls "cruel optimism," then rhetoric and composition will need to imagine theories and structures for peer review that do not repeat cruel attachments. I offer slow peer review as a…

Improved writing can help students in their academic and professional careers, thus this action research project examined the use of three revision strategies in a graduate course by collecting three sources of data. One-sample t-tests revealed no significant differences across paper scores. However, students indicated rough drafts and rewrites…

Peer review is an established strategy for improving the quality of students' writing. This study moves beyond the focus on outcomes to assess the peer-review process. In particular, this study focuses on the timing of the peer review, a highly structured feedback form, and student writers' revisions after engaging in peer review. This study draws…

Although writing is considered one of the most essential foreign language skills, to nurture and develop writing skills among students is challenging. To overcome this, teachers have recently considered benefiting from digital technology. Self-monitoring and self-evaluation, as sub-skills of metacognition, in addition to scaffolding, might be…

Although feedback is often seen as a critical component of the learning process, many open questions about how specific feedback features contribute to the effectiveness of feedback remain--especially in regards to peer feedback of writing. Nelson and Schunn (2009) identified several important features of peer feedback in their nature of feedback…

This essay explores what the development of writing might look like and how it might take shape in a secondary English classroom. The study problematises current definitions of progress. In direct opposition to standards-driven models, I propose an alternative way of thinking about the development of writers through a series of narrative accounts…

Poor quality writing skills among undergraduate geography students is a significant concern among university instructors. This article reports on a multipronged strategy aimed at improving student writing in a large, first-year human geography course. The strategy emphasized ways to provide effective feedback through teaching assistant training,…

This study examined whether instruction in genre knowledge enriches students' feedback on each other's writing, resulting in better writing quality. In total 140 sixth-grade students (age 11-13) participated in the study. Two approaches to peer response with additional instruction were compared. In one condition, students were taught specific…

The present study was conducted to examine the usefulness of peer feedback on APA-style research papers in a writing-intensive class. Subsequent to APA training, students were asked to review and provide feedback on a classmate's APA-style research report for both content and formatting. Performance on this research report was then compared to…

This article contributes to the national discourse on college readiness and postsecondary remediation reform. It discusses an experiential learning model of writing remediation as an alternative to traditional basic skills instruction. Such a model may be practical to support the degree completion rates of underprepared writers whose…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of blogging and portfolio keeping on a group of pre-service teachers' writing skill in a compulsory writing course at a tertiary level English language teaching (ELT) programme in Turkey. The study specifically looked into to what extent receiving feedback from course instructor and peers…

As two lecturers from quite different disciplines--Population Health and Musicology--we faced a common instructional challenge: how to improve the standard of student writing in our first-year courses for nonmajors, and thus to invite our students into the discourses of our disciplines. We collaborated in the design of a sequence of online writing…

Learning outcomes for introductory college-level science classes include content knowledge and a range of critical thinking and analysis skills. In this context, rich writing assignments that engage students in researching content, constructing arguments, and critiquing other students' work are highly desirable but unwieldy due to large…

As increasing number of college and university instructors are requiring peer editing and electronic submission of writing assignments. It is necessary for high school students to learn that quality commentary is essential for peer editing to work and effectively improve their writing skills as part of their college preparation. Successful writers…