Learning Transfer, Peer Feedback, and Massive Open Online Courses
Denise Comer
Peer-to-peer interaction is a key component of learning across nearly all educational contexts, from face-to-face
and hybrid courses to flipped, online, and distance
education. [1] Peer feedback on writing is a form of peer
interaction that has been shown across learning contexts to
have considerable positive impacts. [2] The potential for
peer feedback acquires heightened potential and
complexity in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
due to their scale and learner diversity. [3] One ongoing
and oft-cited concern surrounding peer feedback involves
negative attitudes about whether peers have the capacities
needed to provide meaningful, reliable response to one
another. [4] Such a problem is, arguably, magnified in a
MOOC with the diversity of learners. This study proposes
refocusing this problem by exploring instead the learning
outcomes learners gain from providing peer feedback. This
paper will present the background, methods, and emerging
results of an IRB-approved qualitative coding study of
over 6,000 discursive comments from students enrolled in
a MOOC about what they learned from providing peer
feedback.
[1] Laurillard, D. (2012). Teaching as a design science.
New York: Routledge.
[2] Holt, M. (1992). The value of written peer criticism.
College Composition and Communication, 43(3), 384-
392.
[3] Comer, D. K., Clark, C. R., & Canelas, D. A. (2014).
Writing to learn and learning to write across the
disciplines: Peer-to-peer writing in introductory-level
MOOCs. International Review of Research in Open and
Distance Learning, 15(5).
[4] Furman, B., & Robinson, W. (2003). Improving
engineering report writing with Calibrated Peer Review™.
In D. Budny (Ed.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual
Frontiers in Education Conference. Piscataway, NJ:
IEEE Digital Library. Full Text
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