Peer feedback has become a common practice in MOOCs for its capacity to scale formative assessment and feedback on higher-order abilities. Though many practices for improving peer assessment have been examined, there is a lack of knowledge of how instructional design and platform features affect the quality of peer assessment and the relative frequency of different types of peer feedback comments. This study aimed to improve understanding of the relationship between quality of feedback and peer-feedback' pedagogical design. Peer feedback instructional design and peer feedback comment data were examined from two MOOCS in a similar domain of personal relevance but with substantially different designs. Country of origin of the feedback provider was also examined to control for cultural/linguistic effects. Differences between the two courses were observed in both the pedagogical designs and in the focus of peer comments, suggesting that peer feedback design is an important guide for the focus of peer feedback comments. Furthermore, the results support the idea that instructional design features, mainly the guide' structure and focus, determine the type of comments that participants will produce and hence receive.
Although xMOOCs have shown benefits due to their accessibility to expert knowledge, the quality of their pedagogical proposal remains contested. It has not yet been proven that online education’s learner‑learner interaction practices in xMOOCs generate an improvement in the quality of learning and academic achievement. Peer feedback is a practice that can enhance learning in an environment with diverse student profiles and limited instructor participation. The present mixed methods study was devoted to identifying the perceptions of xMOOC participants regarding learner‑learner interaction and feedback practices. In the Energy Saving course on MexicoX platform, 1,176 participants answered an initial survey, 486 participants answered a final survey and 14 participants were interviewed after completing the course. Results show that most of the participants are willing to interact with their peers and participate in peer feedback activities. Although, in practice its value for summative assessment is an important factor that may predict involvement. It is found that diversity of expertise level is not an obstacle for participants to interact. Rather, participants consider that they may benefit from diversity by assessing their peer assignments and learning different alternatives and strategies in which a problem can be solved. Further, it is identified that peer assessment activities are more adequate for providing feedback than discussion forums, since the first promotes an environment in which participants can observe the performance of their peers showed in a more complex assignment. The findings of this study allow us to analyse inherent and external factors that configure learner‑learner interaction and that affect peer feedback in xMOOCs. It is concluded that more research is needed in order to understand the effect of some factors that may affect peer interaction and peer feedback in xMOOCs and to propose better strategies to improve peer feedback effectiveness.
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