MacDonald, Janet (2001). Open Learning, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2001.

Main Ideas
The author stresses that students need to learn how to adopt a critical approach to written work, whether it is written by themselves or by others. She also notes that students commonly experience problems in adjusting to the reading and writing demands of new courses. This article discusses how these problems can be tackled by the use on online interactivity for ODL courses. The research did a qualitative research of courses taken at the UK Open University.

The study demonstrates the use of networking to deliver a variety of enhancements to assignment feedback. This feedback can be delivered to a group of students incrementally, and within a controlled time frame, thus enhancing the relevance and timeliness of the support, helping to reduce reading overload, and allowing student’s time for reflection or debate. Students can benefit from the feedback by seeing alternative approaches to writing, in refining their understanding of the requirements of assignments, and in learning to be more critical of their own written work.

Many students favored this approach. A couple of student’s reactions were the following:

• “it was interesting to mark another person’s work, not wanting to criticize too much, but still be strict in a fair way”
• “The opportunity to see another essay shows how else it could be tackled”
• “Peer assessment was very interesting. Helps you assess what the tutor is looking for. Makes you more critical of your own writing”
• “No wonder that tutors sometimes take a long time getting them back. It was useful to see this from the ‘other side of the fence’. In doing the exercises I have learnt how important it is to read the questions, and try and establish what is required”

This research has show how valuable lessons can be learnt both from ‘official’ answers produced by the Course Team, and also from the comparison of a range of scripts of varying quality produced by students. Also, this research has showed that peer review proved to be a successful way of enhancing feedback and encouraging a reflective approach, and of demonstrating alternatives approaches to written work.

Implications for Instructional Practice
This research is valuable for instructional designers and teachers because it helps provide more interactive components to their distance learning courses. Having students interact and critique other student’s work is a very powerful teaching tool. This really encourages reflection for students and gives them a deeper knowledge of the subject.

Gut Reaction & Rating of the Article
I thought this article was very interesting and helpful. It helped give me some ideas for online courses. Interaction is very important for teacher, whether it’s in class or online.