Some theorists consider writing and cognition to be symbiotic if not synonymous. Writing is regarded not only a means of communicating and assessing understanding of content knowledge, but as a way of constructing knowledge. Yet, though writing is likely a beneficial activity in most, if not all, disciplines, it has been difficult to implement in content courses. Robust online peer review systems for student writing now offer solutions to many of the problems that have impeded peer review activities in the past.
Research in self-explanations and reciprocal teaching has suggested that students stand to benefit cognitively by articulating explanations to self and others, but this research has been conducted primarily in math and science domains. There have been few, if any, investigations of the effects of articulating feedback for others on one’s own subsequent writing.
The goal of this study was to examine the effects of reviewing on one’s subsequent writing. Further, the study sought to illuminate distinctions between different types of reviewing and reviewer preparation, namely the effects of feedback elaboration and the effects of providing prototypical examples of helpful and unhelpful feedback.
Results indicate that students who provided elaborate forms of feedback, which included free-form comments, performed significantly better on their own writing than students who provided numerical ratings only. In this context, the use of examples did not have significant effects on reviewers’ subsequent writing quality. Also, review-first groups did not perform significantly better than write-first groups, however, the author notes that the design of the study may have inadvertently counteracted reviewing effects.