Peer feedback in virtual workshop of postgraduate thesis writing

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the interventions that different students share in the peer thesis chapter and in their own chapter in the framework of experts and peer feedback activities proposed in a virtual thesis writing workshop. Different students were selected from working groups of two students and a teacher of a 90-hour virtual workshop aimed at teaching thesis writing. This workshop was held in 2017 in National University of Cuyo, Argentina. Within this workshop, each student with an expert had to analyze their own chapter and their peer's chapter taking into account three phases. Firstly, the focus was the communicative situation model and the event model; secondly, the focus was the textual model, particularly movements and steps; finally, the focus was also the textual model, but focused on the linguistic strategies. In these phases, two types of feedback are promoted: in-text and global feedback. Both are analyzed according to four categories: chaining, focus, function and type of analysis. The results show differences with statistical significance between the comments of the own chapter and the peer's chapter based on the feedback modalities (in-text and global), and between the feedback modalities themselves.

Keywords

• in-text feedback
• global feedback
• peer interchange
• virtual workshop
• postgraduate thesis