Students’ Perceptions of Evaluative Judgement in Technology-Mediated Dialogic Peer Feedback

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a worldwide shift in higher education, transitioning from traditional in-person teaching to online instruction. Consequently, there is a need to reevaluate classroom assessment methods for language educators. It involves a departure from summative assessment to formative assessment and sustainable assessment practices. As part of this paradigm shift, academia has placed significant emphasis on developing evaluative judgement and integrating peer feedback. This study focuses on a 12-week English expository writing course, where 66 English Linguistic undergraduates at a Malaysian public university actively participated in technology-mediated dialogic peer feedback under the guidance of two instructors to enhance their development of evaluative judgement in argumentative writing. The thematic analysis of transcript data from semi-structured interviews unveiled that the participants encountered challenges in utilising teacher feedback to enhance their peer feedback skills, overcoming socio-affective barriers to providing and receiving constructive feedback with an open mind and coordinating group members to collaborate effectively in an online environment. They generally held a positive stance towards technology-mediated dialogic peer feedback, acknowledging the advantages of honing evaluative judgement in argumentative writing as providers and receivers of feedback. This study aims to contribute to the discourse regarding students’ openness to peer feedback (i.e., peer feedback orientation) and the challenges and benefits they encounter within the digital learning environments, which have become increasingly common in higher education, with the goal of fostering evaluative judgement within and beyond the writing course.