Pe(e)rfectly Skilled: proficiently skilled in legal pleas, even without a teacher? Students’ perceptions of the effectiveness, efficiency and attractiveness of feedback variants within an online skills training method in Higher Education

This paper reports results of a qualitative study on sophomore students’ online experiences with using the Pe(e)rfectly Skilled (PS-) method to train their pleading skills at two universities (regular and distance learning university). The PS-method is an online, interactive and practice-oriented method for complex skills training, facilitating formative assessment, reflection and (self-, peer and expert) feedback through the use of (video-enhanced) analytical rubrics and self-regulation support. This method facilitates more frequent and highly structured (peer)feedback, so that students can consciously focus their practicing efforts on the mastery of specific subskills. At the same time it intends to reduce teachers’ support burden. Participating students from two different Dutch universities received either both teacher and peer feedback (TP) or only peer feedback (P) while practicing their legal presentations (‘pleas’) with the PS-method. Afterwards, groupwise as well as individual interviews were conducted with a random selection of participating students (6 TP interviews (13 students), 9 P interviews (17 students ). In these interviews, students were asked about their experiences with the overall method, focusing on its perceived effectiveness, efficiency and attractiveness. Additionally, we explored whether students who didn’t receive teacher feedback perceived the method as effective, efficient and attractive as students receiving both teacher-and-peer feedback. Moreover, their suggestions for improvements of future versions of the method were collected. Transcripts of these interviews were analysed with a coding scheme, that was first validated through an inter-rater reliability test. Results showed that in general, students perceive and experience the PS-method both as effective as well as efficient, although teacher feedback is more readily accepted than peer feedback. Moreover, students overall also enjoy working with the method. Additionally, no important differences in perceived effectiveness and attractiveness were detected related to feedback variants, although for perceived efficiency both feedback variant as well as the type of university seemed to matter.