Supervising master students’ theses is one of the tasks of many higher education instructors. Feedback helps students achieve outcomes of better quality and supervisors have been the main source of feedback on master students' theses. However, peer feedback is now more and more often recognised as an important, supplementary approach to supervision. Peer feedback can be regarded as part of a process-oriented writing activity, in which students 1) provide reviews on peers’ work and 2) receive feedback on their own work. Although some students may not be keen to offer and receive feedback from peers, this kind of feedback may be beneficial to students’ academic writing; apart from content and language-related benefits, peer feedback may provide emotional support. As student learning depends on the uptake and use of the provided feedback, review sessions need to be well-structured. In designing such sessions in higher education seminar classes, the framework of collaborative peer feedback may be useful. As described by E. Er, Y. Dimitriadis, and D. Gašević in Collaborative peer feedback and learning analytics: theory-oriented design for supporting class-wide interventions, the learning activity consists of three phases:
In this post, I explain how I implemented peer feedback in my seminar class for first-year TEFL MA students. This semester, the students are working on drafts of their MA theses. Instructions were created and made available through Moodle, the in-class phase was conducted synchronously through MS Teams. BEFORE CLASS PHASE ONE TASK 1. Peer review. For this task (Steps 1-3 below), you will review your partner’s MA thesis literature review (completed last week). Your goal is to help your partner improve the text in the following areas: content, organisation, language, in-text citation, referencing. Step 1. Assess your partner’s literature review by underlying one of the categories: Poor / Fair / Good / Excellent. Assessed work: ………[title of the thesis / literature review]........ Note: If the title is not provided, give it a name, e.g. “L2 anxiety and L2 learning”
Step 2. In this task your goal is to provide the feedback on your partner's literature review by suggesting:
Step 3. Publish the assessment (step 1) and the feedback (step 2) in “Research Writers’ Forum - Peer review” on Moodle. Do not use the author’s name. TASK 2. Self-assessment. Step 1. For this task, you will assess your own work - the literature review for your MA thesis. Use this rubric to self-assess your work:
Step 2. Declare the weaknesses that you see in the current version of your literature review. Is there anything, in your view, that:
Step 3. Publish the self-assessment (step 1) and the declaration of weaknesses (step 2) in “Research Writers’ Forum - Self-assessment” on Moodle. IN CLASS (Student conference through MS Teams) PHASE TWO TASK 3. The discussion of feedback. Step 1. Read the review of your work - see “Writers’ Forum - Peer Review” on Moodle. Step 2. Compare the review with your own self-assessment. In what ways is your self-assessment different from the peer review? Is there anything you need to know more from your reviewer? Step 3. Talk to your reviewer about her feedback to decide how you can move forward, i.e. how you can improve your literature review before you submit your MA Thesis proposal for final assessment by 14th June 2020. Step 4. Write a list of all actions you need to take before submission. PHASE THREE TASK 4. Your action plan. Write your action plan: write when you plan to complete each action that you listed in the previous step. Publish your action plan below (Moodle forum). TASK 5. Reflection on giving and receiving feedback. Finish the sentence stems below: 1. Giving the feedback on somebody’s work (MA thesis literature review) was / is …. 2. Self-assessment of my own MA thesis literature review was / is ... 3. Receiving feedback on my own work (MA thesis literature review) was / is ... Publish your thoughts below (Moodle forum). References: Er, E., Dimitriadis, Y., & Gašević, D. (2020). Collaborative peer feedback and learning analytics: theory-oriented design for supporting class-wide interventions. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1-22. Zhang, Y., Yu, S., & Yuan, K. (2020). Understanding Master’s students’ peer feedback practices from the academic discourse community perspective: A rethinking of postgraduate pedagogies. Teaching in Higher Education, 25(2), 126-140.
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Debates, typically associated with politics and legislation, are carried out to consider and discuss matters that need to be resolved. In a debate, participants argue from opposing standpoints, sometimes in the presence of an audience. In educational contexts, debating often takes the form of a contest to engage teams in competition against each other, winners being selected on the basis of a set of criteria (DAV). As debating can be a stimulating real-life activity, higher education language students can profit from debate-based classes. Involving students in this type of spoken interaction activity allows for the integration of all language skills. It can also be beneficial for developing students’ higher-order thinking (synthesizing, analysing, reasoning, comprehending, application, and evaluation) (ThoughtCo.). THIS STUDY conducted by Karen McRae shows that, although initially challenging, debating can be enjoyable, engaging and fulfilling for the students, leading to improvement in their competences. In this post I share a full lesson sequence and the materials for a speaking class, adopting genre-based instruction (see chapter 10 in THIS book). I used competitive debating to develop English speaking skills among English Studies students in Poland. *** First, in Moodle, I created the tasks for the whole class and I collected online materials. Then, I used this content to teach a 90-minute class. I conducted this class when face-to-face was possible; today I would do it fully online, using Microsoft Teams. And I would call it “Virtual Debating” :) Phase One. Building the context Task 1. Students work in twos or threes and answer the questions:
Task 2. Debating. You will take part in a debate. The matter to be resolved: Facebook is bad for communicating and developing relationships. (You can read THIS post on why I selected the topic related to digital citizenship.) Team 1: you support the thesis, prepare your arguments, Team 2: you are against the thesis, prepare your arguments. Each team will have 2 minutes at a time to comment their opponent's turn and argue their point of view. You can include arguments concerning:
Assessment criteria (scoring: 1=poor, 6=excellent) As a debater, how well can you:
Procedure 1. In teams of 3, students prepare their arguments and take notes (3 minutes) 2. Students take part in the debate in three rounds (17 minutes) 3. Students, in their teams, assess their own and peers’ performance, using the assessment criteria above.
Phase 2. Modelling and deconstructing the text Task. 1. Students are made better familiar with the structure of a turn in a debate: Part 1 – Opening
or: Part 1 - introduction/opening - saying what you will talk about, Part 2 - main body Part 3 - conclusion - say what you have talked about. Source: Rusinek, M. & Załazińska, A. (2018). Jak się dogadać czyli retoryka codzienna. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, pp. 161-185. Task 2. Model analysis 1. Students watch THIS extract from “The Great Debaters” [1:43:15 - 1:55:15] and note their answers:
Task 3. Vocabulary development. Unit 38. Presenting an argument. Academic Vocabulary in Use, Michael McCarthy & Felicity O'Dell, Cambridge University Press . Phase 3. Joint construction Reflection. How would you modify the turns in the debate you took part in at the beginning of this class? Think, take notes and talk to your partner(s). Phase 4. Independent construction of the text You will take part in a new debate. Resolve: Teenagers should be banned from editing, posting, and commenting on photos online. Team 1: you are in favour of the thesis, think of your arguments, Team 2: you are against the thesis, think of your arguments. The procedure is the same as in Phase One Task 2. Phase 5. Linking to related texts Students are asked to answer these two questions: 1. How is debating similar/different from talks/presentations (discussed last class)? 2. How is debating similar/different from discussions (to be discussed next class)? Additional resources Higher education students, just like everybody else, need to be able to safely, critically, creatively and productively take part in a digital society. Language instructors can help their students become digital citizens by including content related to, among others, digital literacy, digital footprint, copyright and intellectual property respect, health and wellness, security and privacy (Digital Citizenship Conversations) in the coursework. In so doing, while developing foreign/second language skills, they can prepare their students for life and work in a digital society.
As to pedagogy, teaching digital citizenship can be implemented in a higher education language classroom by using technology-enhanced task-based language teaching (TBLT) (see chapter 9 in THIS book). In this approach, we focus on a real-world task (that is real communication, authentic communicative situations), not a grammar point or a lexical area. Language is a communication instrument which enables task completion. Students are exposed to language (input) and use their language resources to execute the task at hand (language output, production). What is important, students have an opportunity to understand what they (don’t) know and become more aware of their learning needs. The instructional cycle consists of three stages:
Description of the TBLT speaking activity. I applied this approach in my speaking course for English Studies students (as part of their “practical English” programme). By engaging them with the tasks on digital citizenship, I aimed to develop both their content knowledge (see THIS post on the importance of developing students content knowledge for speaking) and their English speaking skills. I targeted these specific skill areas:
As part of their obligatory coursework, out-of-class, throughout the whole semester, the students did research on an assigned topic, recorded and shared their 3-minute talks using the SoundCloud application (HERE is more about this online oral production activity). Instructions for each task were published on Moodle and included the following elements:
The TBLT sequence. At the pre-task stage, the students were provided with the topic, the websites that they could use to learn about the topic, as well a list of aspects that could be considered in the podcast. At the task stage, the students recorded their podcasts using the SoundCloud application and submitted the recording online. Finally, at the post-task stage, the students got feedback from peers: they accessed podcasts online, listened to them and gave feedback with reference to the provided criteria. After that, each student received individual feedback from me through the Moodle messenger. A sample task. Topic: Managing digital footprint on the Internet. Aim: to persuade people to take more care when it comes to their online reputation. Audience: your group. Duration: 3 minutes. Submit HERE [the link]. In order to record the podcast, you can consider:
Browse these resources to get more information: Your podcast will be assessed using these criteria: 1) How effective was the speaker?
Sample feedback on student podcasts. The students could score the maximum of 6 points for each criterion. |
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