Creating an online community of inquiry: learner practice and perceptions of community-based feedback giving in academic writing

Abstract

While the importance of the peer feedback in second or foreign language (L2 or FL) classrooms in higher education has been increasingly recognized, empirical research on discussing peer feedback literacy from the perspective of community-based academic writing is very much in its infancy. Informed by the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, this qualitative study aims to explore learners’ feedback practice and their perceptions of providing peer feedback in an online community-based academic writing task. The analysis was based on multiple sources of data (pre-task surveys, online community-based feedback entries, post-task stimulated recalls, in-depth group interviews, and follow-up WeChat interviews) from 31 Chinese undergraduates. The results indicated that although students provided feedback with different focuses, they valued online community peer feedback over traditional peer feedback for seeking affective appropriateness, facilitating social interaction, and seeking better practice. Additionally, students considered online community peer feedback practice could help with finding the reviewers’ own voices through different stages of reflective knowledge building processes, and transferring to subsequent revisions. This study provides pedagogical implications for how a community-based approach to online peer feedback can enhance students’ academic writing practice.

Keywords:

• Community of inquiry
• academic writing
• students’ perceptions
• peer feedback

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Our choice was based on the research objective, namely, the breadth of student comment focuses. Nevertheless, as one anonymous reviewer pointed out, this could also under-represent the different weights that students gave to different aspects of the sample, which issue could have been of interest in a study that focuses on individual differences in feedback foci.

Additional information

Funding

This research was sponsored by National Social Science Fund No. 20210020041.

Notes on contributors

Wenting Chen

Wenting Chen is Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics at College English Department, Capital Normal University, China. Her research interests include second language writing, multicultural education, and second language teacher education. Her publications have appeared in international journals such as TESOL Quarterly, Language Teaching Research, System, ELT Journal and Language Awareness.

Jianwu Gao

Jianwu Gao is Associate Professor at Department of English Language and Literature, Capital Normal University, China. Her research interests include second language writing and second language acquisition. Her publications have appeared in international journals such as Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Language Teaching Research, and Language Learning & Technology.