Gender differences in students’ argumentative essay writing, peer review performance and uptake in online learning environments

This study adopted a pre-test–post-test design to explore gender
differences in argumentative essay writing and peer review
performance and uptake within a higher education context. To do this,
as part of a bigger project, 101 students were asked to individually
write an argumentative essay, engage in peer review activities and
revise their original essay based on the received reviews from peers.
The findings showed that female students perform better than male
students in argumentative essay writing in terms of taking a position on
the topic. Gender differences were also found in peer review
performance, where females provided better justifications for identified
problems in peer review, more constructive reviews and higher quality
peer review than males. The findings also revealed that although there
was no gender difference in overall peer review uptake, females uptake
of peer review resulted in improvement of their arguments against the
position in the revised essay. These findings suggest that gender plays
a significant role in argumentative essay writing, peer review
performance and uptake of the received reviews from peers.
Recommendations for future research along with how to deal with
these gender differences in educational practice in online settings are
provided based on the findings.