Can You Hear Us Now?: A comparison of peer review quality when students give audio versus written feedback
Most instructors teaching writing courses seek ways to improve student writing and facilitate more active student engagement in the revision process. One way to do this is through teaching students to provide high quality peer reviews. In this study, we followed first-year composition students for one semester and assessed the quality of their peer reviews when they gave audio versus written feedback to their classmates. Audio feedback was digitally-recorded using iPods or similar technology. In general, we found that the quality of audio reviews was higher than written reviews. Students, however, preferred giving and receiving written feedback. Our results suggest that instructors should adopt audio peer review when possible, but may need to help students recognize its value.
