Why You Should Give Your Students Automatic Process Feedback on Their Collaboration: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment

Lukas Menzel*, Sebastian Gombert, Joshua Weidlich, Aron Fink, Andreas Frey, Hendrik Drachsler

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference Article in proceedingAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

In Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), students learn in small groups to achieve learning benefits outside what would be possible for individual students. As in other forms of learning, students need feedback on the quality of their work. Still, writing high-quality informative feedback requires time on the part of educators. This makes it less feasible to provide quality feedback at scale. Given the importance of group dynamics in CSCL, quality feedback should also contain information about group processes and discussion quality. Emergent roles provide a natural anchor point for this.
We propose a method to automatically deliver highly informative, textual process feedback for CSCL forum discussion tasks in an introductory teacher education class, focusing on individual students’ group communication. This feedback is generated from several discourse indicators, that are used to derive emergent roles of the students. From that we derive feedback about strengths and potential for improvement. In a randomized control trial, we show that the highly informative feedback generated with our method is preferred by the students. Implications and avenues for future research are discussed in light of these findings.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationResponsive and Sustainable Educational Futures
Subtitle of host publication18th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2023, Aveiro, Portugal, September 4–8, 2023, Proceedings
EditorsOlga Viberg, Ioana Jivet, Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino, Maria Perifanou, Tina Papathoma
PublisherSpringer, Cham
Pages198-212
Number of pages15
Volume14200
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-031-42682-7
ISBN (Print)9783031426810
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2023
Event18th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, ECTEL 2023 - Aveiro, Portugal
Duration: 4 Sept 20238 Sept 2023
https://ea-tel.eu/ectel2023

Publication series

SeriesLecture Notes in Computer Science
Volume14200
ISSN0302-9743

Conference

Conference18th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, ECTEL 2023
Country/TerritoryPortugal
CityAveiro
Period4/09/238/09/23
Internet address

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