The effectiveness of online peer-feedback for group interaction and assessment quality in a high-enrolment and culturally diverse undergraduate topic

In higher education, the cognitive, behavioural and motivational benefits of peer feedback have been realised. Previously, we reported enhanced group interaction and assessment quality following online peer feedback in a small, undergraduate cohort (Emery, 2024). In this study, we applied key components from theoretical feedback models to online (FeedbackFruits) activities to verify peer feedback outcomes in a high-enrolment, culturally diverse, undergraduate topic. Students actively participated (range 88.8-97.4%) in five online peer feedback tasks, with feedback value ranked as ‘high’ for peer-to-peer (58.7%) and group-to-group (62.0%) processes. Group-to-group feedback significantly (p<0.01) improved poster format (3.79 vs 4.61), referencing (3.25 vs 4.40) and topic coverage (3.88 vs 4.70) between draft and final submissions. Similarly, mean peer evaluation scores significantly (p<0.05) improved for information sharing (3.86 vs 3.93) and discussion skills (3.86 vs 3.91%) post-feedback. This study highlights the importance of understanding learner characteristics and technologies in optimising feedback practice in real-world settings.