Using Group Awareness Tools to Enhance Students’ Behavioral and Cognitive Engagement with Peer Feedback in Online Collaborative Essay Writing

Abstract

Group awareness tools have the potential to increase student engagement in computer supported collaborative learning. However, few studies have investigated the influence of group awareness tools on student engagement with peer feedback in online collaborative language learning settings. This study used a quasi-experiment method to explore the effects of group awareness tools on students’ behavioral and cognitive engagement with peer feedback in online collaborative essay writing. The experimental group (n = 21) was required to complete 3-round collaborative writing and peer assessment of an argumentative essay supported by group awareness tools and the control group (n = 21) was asked to complete the same tasks without group awareness tools. The results showed that the students with group awareness tools demonstrated higher behavioral engagement with peer feedback. They provided significantly more comments across all the three rounds of peer feedback. Additionally, the students provided with group awareness tools showed significantly higher cognitive engagement in providing both surface-level and meaning-level feedback. The students in the experimental class engaged in significantly more meaning-level feedback in the last round of peer assessment. This paper also provides suggestions for future studies on applying group awareness tools in collaborative writing