Peer feedback or peer feedforward? Enhancing students’ argumentative peer
learning processes and outcomes
British Journal of Educational Technology
Latifi, Saeed; Noroozi, Omid; Talaee, Ebrahim
https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13054
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British Journal of Educational Technology
doi:10.1111/bjet.13054
Vol 52 No 2 2021 768–784
© 2021 British Educational Research Association
Peer feedback or peer feedforward? Enhancing students’
argumentative peer learning processes and outcomes
Saeed Latifi, Omid Noroozi and Ebrahim Talaee
Saeed Latifi is a lecturer at Kharazmi University, Iran. His research interests include Peer Feedback, E-Learning and
Distance Education, Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), Argumentative Knowledge Construction
in CSCL, Argumentation-Based CSCL, CSCL Scripts and Transactivity. Omid Noroozi is an Associate Professor at the
Education and Learning Sciences Chair Group, Wageningen University and Research, The Netherlands. His research
interests include Peer Feedback, Collaborative Learning, E-Learning and Distance Education, Computer-Supported
Collaborative Learning (CSCL), Argumentative Knowledge Construction in CSCL, Argumentation-Based CSCL,
CSCL Scripts and Transactivity. Ebrahim Talaee is a faculty member of Educational Technology at Tarbiat Modares
University, Iran. His research interests include Educational Technology, Peer Feedback, E-Learning and Distance
Education, Curriculum Design and Development. Address for correspondence: Saeed Latifi, Kharazmi University,
Tehran, Iran. Email: saeed.latifi@gmail.com
Introduction
Undergraduate students are often tasked with writing argumentative essays when they deal with
complex and controversial issues (see Noroozi, Biemans, & Mulder, 2016). Inclusion and devel-
opment of arguments are key features of each successful essay (Wingate, 2012). Many schol-
ars emphasize that writing argumentative essays on controversial topics in any given domain
requires students to provide a clear position on the issue as their main claim, supported with
logical evidence and followed by counter-arguments against the main claim. Furthermore, the
Abstract
This study compared the effects of support for peer feedback, peer feedforward and their
combination on students’ peer learning processes, argumentative essay quality and
domain-specific learning. Participants were 86 BSc students who were randomly divided
over 43 dyads. These dyads, in a two-factorial experimental design, were assigned to four
conditions including: peer feedback (n=22), peer feedforward (n=22), mixed (n=20)
and control group (n =22) conditions. An online peer feedback environment named
EduTech was designed which allowed us to implement various types of support in the
form of question prompts. In this online environment, students were asked to write an
argumentative essay on a controversial topic, to engage in peer learning processes and
to revise their essay. Overall, the results showed that students in the three experimental
conditions (peer feedback, peer feedforward and their combination) benefited more than
students in the control group condition (without any support) in term of peer learning
processes, argumentative essay quality and domain-specific learning. However, there
was no significant difference among the three experimental conditions. This implies
that peer feedforward can be as important as peer feedback in collaborative learning
environments which is often neglected both in theory and practice.
Keywords: argumentative essay writing, domain-specific learning, peer feedback, peer
feedforward, peer learning
© 2021 British Educational Research Association
Peer feedback or peer feedforward? 769
essay needs integration of pros and cons of the issue at stake leading to a general conclusion
on the issue (see Latifi, Noroozi, Hatami, & Biemans, 2019; Noroozi et al., 2016). This suggests
that argumentative essay writing needs solid argumentation and reasoning strategies (Wingate,
2012). Unfortunately, many higher education students struggle with including and developing
such argumentation strategies in their essays (Wingate, 2012). Teachers often complain about
the lack of structure sound argumentation and solid reasoning in students’ argumentative essays
(Kellogg & Whiteford, 2009).
Various factors may contribute to the poor quality of students’ argumentative essays: First, some
students may lack knowledge of the features and structure of argumentative essay (Bacha, 2010;
Wingate, 2012). Hence, they may deal with difficulties in applying these features when writing
essays (Noroozi et al., 2016). Second, since the nature of argumentative essays could be different
across and even within disciplines (Wingate, 2012), the process of transferring argumentation
knowledge from one domain to another could be troublesome (see Noroozi, Kirschner, Biemans,
& Mulder, 2018; Wingate, 2012). Third, writing argumentative essays is cognitively demand-
ing (Crowhurst, 1990) which imposes large amount of intrinsic cognitive load on learners. The
reason is that applying solid argumentation and reasoning in written essays requires students to
engage in deep and critical cognitive elaboration of the materials that can take into account the
opinions of both opponents and proponents of the issue at stake (see Noroozi, 2018). These issues
suggest that higher education students need additional support on how to write sound argumen-
tative essays that include solid argumentation and reasoning strategies on controversial issues.
Peer learning has been considered as one of the most promising approaches that can be used for
supporting students to write high-quality argumentative essays (see Latifi et al., 2019).
Practitioner Notes
What is already known about this topic?
• Writing argumentative essays is a common practice for higher education students in
various disciplines which deal with controversial issues.
• Writing argumentative essay requires solid argumentation strategies which makes it
a challenging task for higher education students.
• Additional instructional support is needed to help students write high-quality argu-
mentative essays.
What this paper adds?
• Peer learning is a promising instructional strategy for improving students’ argumen-
tative essay writing and learning.
• Online support in the form of question prompts to guide students during peer learning
can improve their argumentative essay writing and learning.
• Next to the peer feedback, peer feedforward is also a promising instructional approach
to support students’ argumentative essay writing and learning.
Implications for practice and/or policy
• Given the positive effects of peer learning processes, the use of peer feedback and peer
feedforward should be given more attention by teachers to support students write
high-quality argumentative essays for controversial issues.
• Teachers and educational designers should not only provide opportunities for students
to engage in peer feedback processes (how I am doing?) but also in peer feedforward
processes (where to next?).
© 2021 British Educational Research Association
770 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 52 No 2 2021
Theoretically, peer learning is related to Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1962), explain-
ing that human learning is mainly a social and cultural process that occurs through meaningful
negotiation and interaction between learners (see Rahimi, 2013). From this perspective, learning
is socially constructed during interaction and activity with others (Vygotsky, 1978). In this study,
peer learning is considered as knowledge acquisition and learning through provision of feed-
back and feedforward to learning peers and also reception of peer feedback and feedforward from
equal-status students. Peer learning can be conducted in real educational settings by equal-status
students who are not professional teachers trying to help each other and paying compliments
on their knowledge to learn together (Topping, 2005). Peer learning has recently been used as
a highly flexible and applicable strategy for improving a wide variety of processes or outcomes
of task performance, including improving quality of students’ writing (Huisman, Saab, van den
Broek, & van Driel, 2018; Ion, Barrera-Corominas, & Tomàs-Folch, 2016; Min, 2006; Topping,
2009) and domain-specific learning (Latifi et al., 2019; Noroozi & Mulder, 2017; Valero Haro,
Noroozi, Biemans, & Mulder, 2018).
The effectiveness of peer learning has been widely reported in various empirical studies (see
Noroozi & Mulder, 2017). With practice through peer learning, students are enabled to pro-
mote their ability to detect, diagnose and solve writing problems (Liu & Carless, 2006; Patchan
& Schunn, 2015). By comparing their own writing with peers, students are enabled to broaden
and deepen their reflective thinking (Yang, 2010) and critical thinking and understanding about
the topic (see Noroozi et al., 2016). Peer learning promotes a sense of audience, boosts learners’
knowledge of their own strengths and shortcomings and provides opportunities for collaborative
learning (Tsui & Ng, 2000; Xiao & Lucking, 2008). Therefore, in the long-term, with peer learn-
ing students become more independent and active learners and less reliant on the teacher (Tsui
& Ng, 2000). This in turn leads to more confident students who can acquire metacognitive, mon-
itoring and self-regulation skills (Earl, 2003). Previous literature report that peer learning prac-
tices lead to improvements of students’ self-monitoring skills and performance independently of
the teacher (see Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006; Van den Boom, Paas, & van Merriënboer, 2007).
Asking students to engage in peer learning process without appropriate support and clear criteria
does not lead to successful learning performance especially when it comes to writing argumenta-
tive essays and learning from such essays. Some instructors claim that students might not be able
to go beyond surface level feedback during peer learning (Cho & Schunn, 2007). This is especially
the case with novice students with less expertise who mostly struggle to provide detailed and
high-quality feedback to their peers. Furthermore, peer learning can be biased because of vari-
ation in students’ prior knowledge, peer characteristics, personal preferences and relationships
with the peers (Dijks, Brummer, & Kostons, 2018). Hence, such variation may affect the validity
of the peer learning (see Liu & Carless, 2006).
The most important challenge for peer learning is that most students focus on responding to the
actual task with respect to the actual performance of their learning peers (peer feedback). In most
cases, students do not provide information on possible directions or strategies (peer feedforward)
for their learning peers to attain the desired goal (see Noroozi & Hatami, 2019). One may argue
that in practice peer feedforward is already embedded in the peer feedback practices. This is basi-
cally what we expect from a typical peer learning process but scientific evidence shows that this
is not the case and students often ignore giving direction on “where to next” and mostly focus on
“how am I doing.”
This is striking since peer learning should not only focus on peer’s actual work and performance
(how I am doing?) but also indicating a direction by delineating a goal to be attained (where to
next?) (see Hattie & Timperley, 2007). From this perspective, peer learning can be more effective
© 2021 British Educational Research Association
Peer feedback or peer feedforward? 771
when the feedback also includes information about the progress and more importantly how to
proceed (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). This implies that peer learning can take place in the form
of feedback, feedforward or both. This is especially important because nowadays educational
technologies allow teachers to easily embed both peer feedback and peer feedforward question
prompts in the learning environment. For example, such incorporation of peer feedback and peer
feedforward can be done through computer-supported collaborative learning environments (see
Noroozi, Kirschner, et al., 2018) to help learners complement each other’s information on the
topic and co-construct knowledge together. Online learning environments can be designed in
such a way to provide students with the opportunity to not only reflect on the actual work and
performance of their peers (peer feedback), but also reflect and provide directions to their peers
towards achieving the desired goal. Implementation of peer learning through online environ-
ments provide various opportunities for peer learning which are not possible in the traditional
face to face environments. Online learning environments enable teachers to remove students’
identification and hereby provide students with an opportunity to engage in anonymous peer
learning processes, ie, giving and receiving feedback and feedforward from peers anonymously
(Nicol, Thomson, & Breslin, 2014). When peer feedback is not applied anonymously, there is
always a possibility for students to fall into undesirable social bias based on their friendships and/
or other social relationships and/or experience conflicts. Such bias can affect students’ learning
and their attitudes towards peer learning (see Lin, 2018). Preventing or reducing undesirable
social bias may result in a deeper critical peer learning processes (Lin, Liu, & Yuan, 2001). Such
anonymity also seems to influence the content of comments during peer learning (Dijks et al.,
2018). Lin (2018) indicates that when peer review is anonymous, students significantly provide
more cognitive comments than affective comments. This is important since high-quality peer
learning processes typically include deep cognitive processing (King, 2002).
Engaging in peer feedback and peer feedforward processes can be time consuming especially
when students are not accustomed to the clear criteria for peer learning processes in traditional
settings (Rollinson, 2005). Students need to spend a significant amount of time on thinking, ana-
lyzing and criticizing their peers’ works (Liu & Carless, 2006). Traditional educational settings
may not always accommodate such clear criteria and enough time for students and, as a result,
the potential of peer learning may not be fully attained. Online environments allow for embed-
ding various types of clear criteria for example, through question prompts that can guide stu-
dents to provide their peers with more reliable, valid and relevant feedback and feedforward (Latifi
et al., 2019; Noroozi, Biemans, Busstra, Mulder, & Chizari, 2011; Noroozi et al., 2016). Scientific
research reveal positive outcomes of providing students with clear criteria during peer learning
on quality of students’ peer learning processes, argumentative essay writing and domain-specific
knowledge learning (see Latifi et al., 2019; Noroozi et al., 2016; Valero Haro et al., 2018, Gielen
& Wever, 2015).
To summarize, previous research has shown that engaging in high-quality peer learning pro-
cesses can enhance essay writing quality (Gielen & De Wever, 2015; Noroozi et al., 2016). There
is not yet empirical research comparing the effects of support for the feedback, feedforward and
their combination on various aspects of learning processes and outcomes of argumentative essay
writing. The picture is unclear whether provision of feedback on the actual task is more beneficial
or rather provision of feedforward on the possible direction towards achieving the desired goal.
Thus, in this study, we aim to compare the effects of support for the peer feedback, peer feedfor-
ward and their combination on students’ peer learning processes, argumentative essay quality
and domain-specific learning. We have formulated following questions to achieve the main goal
of this empirical study: