Are Review Skills and Academic Writing Skills Related? An Exploratory Analysis via Multi Source Feedback Tools

Abstract

Because students learn from each other as well as lecturers, it is important to create opportunities for collaboration in writing classes. Teachers now benefit from access to plagiarism detectors that can also provide feedback. This exploratory study considers the role of four review types, open and anonymous, involving the students themselves, peer and tutor reviewing, and anonymous digital review by means of plagiarism detectors. Eighty-seven freshmen from Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey, participated. Throughout the term, feedback was provided by four sources: the tutor, peers, software, and by students themselves. At the end of the term, written assignments were self and peer reviewed, and graded by the course lecturer. Results indicated that higher-scoring students could manage both self and peer review tasks more effectively. The study suggests that academic writing and reviewing skills are related, and that integrating review skills into evaluation procedures may result in a more reliable assessment

Keywords

• academic writing, anonymous peer review, digital feedback, digital technology, plagiarism detectors, self review