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The purpose of this paper is to propose a reciprocal peer review approach that resembled the scholarly peer review process using the Moodle e-learning system. The authors investigated interrelations among engagement in providing peer feedback, engagement in responding to peer feedback, learner-content interaction and learning outcomes.

An experimental intervention study was designed. A total of 45 students who enroled in an undergraduate research methods course completed the assigned project. Reciprocal peer review was adopted, in which the participants provided a peer review report on a randomly assigned peer’s research proposal. Subsequently, participants revised and submitted their proposal along with a response letter that highlighted the revisions.

This study highlights that the engagement in providing peer feedback exerts an indirect effect on learning outcomes through learner-content interaction. Learner-content interaction fully mediates the causal relationship between engagement in providing peer feedback and learning outcomes.

Learner-content interaction fully mediates the causal relationship between engagement in providing peer feedback and learning outcomes. Thus, e-learning practitioners who engage in peer review should first construct high-quality course materials to enhance learning outcomes.

Learning outcomes can be enhanced if there is a high level of engagement in providing peer feedback among learners. However, learner-content interaction fully mediates the positive effect of engagement in providing peer feedback on learning outcomes. Furthermore, engagement in providing peer feedback will enhance the learner’s motivation to intensify his or her learning from the course material.

In this chapter, we introduce a new technology for facilitating and measuring learner engagement. The system creates a learning experience for students based on frequent feedback, which is critical to learning. We open by problematizing traditional approaches to learner engagement that do not maximize the potential of feedback and offer a research-based solution in a new classroom response system (CRS) two of the authors developed at Harvard University – Learning Catalytics. The chapter includes an overview of cognitive science principles linked to student learning and how those principles are tied to Learning Catalytics. We then provide an overview of the limitations of existing CRSs and describe how Learning Catalytics addresses those limitations. Finally, we describe how we used Learning Catalytics to facilitate and measure learner engagement in novel ways, through a pilot implementation in an undergraduate physics classroom at Harvard University. This pilot was guided by two questions: How can we use Learning Catalytics to help students engage with subject matter in ways that will help them learn? And how can we measure student engagement in new ways using the analytics built into the system? The objective of this chapter is to introduce Learning Catalytics as a new instructional tool and respond to these questions.

The purpose of this paper is to describe an online faculty development pilot course on how to engage students online. A framework was used, referred to as the Trifecta of Student Engagement, for the design of the course. The Trifecta of Student Engagement proposes that students, in order to be fully engaged in a course, need to be engaged with their course content, with their peers and with their instructor. The course has three units of content that each correspond to the Trifecta of Student Engagement. This course has gone through one pilot with faculty and has impacted students and faculty positively.

An online faculty development course was piloted with eight faculty members across a range of disciplines who participated in the program. After taking the course, they had to apply the Trifecta of Student Engagement framework to a course they taught and share what they did via written report, webinar, or web presentation. This study summarized the faculty participants’ written reports and presentations as well as provided a qualitative evaluation on the impact this course had on students and faculty.

After faculty applied the Trifecta of Student Engagement framework to courses taught, faculty saw an improvement in student engagement, satisfaction, learning and achievement. Three faculty surveyed students to determine their engagement and satisfaction and found students to respond positively to the use of tools and activities for student-to-content engagement, student-to-student engagement and student-to-instructor engagement. Two faculty examined student grades to determine if there were changes in student outcomes. One professor saw average grades increase by 11 percent. Another professor saw grades improve by 8 percent. She also found that student assessment of learning increased by 0.57. Both faculty attributed the improvement to the effectiveness of the teaching strategies employed.

This research is limited to the eight faculty who participated in the pilot. Some faculty used methods to attempt to measure the impacts of their teaching practices by surveying students and looking at student performance data. A second pilot is needed for additional faculty to take the course and apply the Trifecta of Engagement framework to generate more data for impact.

Institutions looking to create an online teaching professional development course for faculty can utilize the Trifecta of Student Engagement framework for their course design. Additionally, faculty can read about tools and strategies that they can immediately apply to create more student-to-content engagement, student-to-student engagement and student-to-instructor engagement.

Faculty can be more intentional in how they engage students in their online course experience.

This paper adds to the literature on faculty development regarding student-centered teaching practices. Other institutions looking to create a faculty development course or program that utilizes a student-centered framework may find aspects of this paper useful for their own online teaching professional development initiatives.

The growing body of research on student engagement in online writing courses suggests that learning management system (LMS) technology does not by itself create an interactive learning situation nor does it automatically engage students in meaningful interactions with their peers and the instructor. Traditional top-down engagement strategies such as a discussion forum, we argue, have not worked to increase student-to-student engagement in the online environment, confirming our contention that students’ notions of engagement and quality are different from instructors’. Engagement should be re-envisioned as a student-centered effort, wherein educators take on the responsibility of implementing strategies that promote student-to-student engagement. This chapter, then, reconceptualizes approaches to student engagement in online writing-intensive classes. It examines how virtual learning environments challenge traditional notions of student engagement, offers some innovative learner–instructor engagement strategies that can be marshaled to improve student learning, and addresses the challenges and successes of this undertaking, in an effort to establish a meaningful and sustainable student-centered online writing classroom.

The Giving Voice to Values (GVV) program takes a unique approach to ethics education by shifting the focus away from a philosophical analysis of why actions are unethical to a focus on how individuals can effectively voice their values to resolve ethical conflict. The authors explore how peer feedback and peer assessment, when implemented within a GVV module, can increase students’ understanding of ways to resolve ethical dilemmas, increase student engagement, and increase confidence in confronting unethical actions. The findings indicate that the use of peer feedback and assessment increases students’ understanding of ways to resolve ethical dilemmas, increases confidence in confronting unethical actions, and student attitudes suggest that assessing peers is a way to learn from each other and enhances interaction/engagement of students in the course. The teaching methods described in this study can easily be implemented in any specific discipline or accounting ethics course.

This paper presents a case study for the pilot of a peer-led service model that is centered on fostering student leadership, collaboration and advocacy. The authors, who serve as advisors to the program, discuss the Library's transition to this peer-led model for reference support, outreach, programming and campus engagement.

This case study examines the development and implementation of a new peer-led service at a mid-size public university aimed at centering student success, belonging and empowerment. Authors share practices, strategies and goals for training, onboarding and professional development with emphasis on student advocacy, leadership and retention in the program.

The authors found that developing the structures and opportunities to foster student-led initiatives and efforts for student success, belonging and engagement has helped the library better connect and engage with diverse student communities on campus.

Findings of this study may be limited at the time this case study is written due to it being a new and developing library student program for reference, outreach and programming.

The peer-led service model for reference and student engagement presented in this article serves as a case study that may be applicable for those who wish to imagine and develop a student-centered library program at their institution.

This case study may provide an alternative approach useful to those who wish to reimagine and innovate library student programs at their institutions.

Although there are many peer-led initiatives in academic libraries for outreach and programming, this program explores the approach of fostering student leadership and advocacy within library student roles to lead and facilitate library efforts for campus engagement with structured guidance and support from librarian advisors.

As a way of focusing curriculum development and learning outcomes universities have introduced graduate attributes, which their students should develop during their degree course. Some of these attributes are discipline‐specific, others are generic to all professions. The development of these attributes can be promoted by the careful use of self‐ and peer assessment. The authors have previously reported using the self‐ and peer assessment software tool SPARK in various contexts to facilitate opportunities to practise, develop, assess and provide feedback on these attributes. This research and that of the other developers identified the need to extend the features of SPARK, to increase its flexibility and capacity to provide feedback. This paper seeks to report the results of the initial trials to investigate the potential of these new features to improve learning outcomes.

The paper reviews some of the key literature with regard to self‐ and peer assessment, discusses the main aspects of the original online self‐ and peer assessment tool SPARK and the new version SPARK^PLUS, reports and analyses the results of a series of student surveys to investigate whether the new features and applications of the tool have improved the learning outcomes in a large multi‐disciplinary Engineering Design subject.

It was found that using self‐ and peer assessment in conjunction with collaborative peer learning activities increased the benefits to students and improved engagement. Furthermore it was found that the new features available in SPARK^PLUS facilitated efficient implementation of additional self‐ and peer assessment processes (assessment of individual work and benchmarking exercises) and improved learning outcomes. The trials demonstrated that the tool assisted in improving students' engagement with and learning from peer learning exercises, the collection and distribution of feedback and helping them to identify their individual strengths and weaknesses.

SPARK^PLUS facilitates the efficient management of self‐ and peer assessment processes even in large classes, allowing assessments to be run multiple times a semester without an excessive burden for the coordinating academic. While SPARK^PLUS has enormous potential to provide significant benefits to both students and academics, it is necessary to caution that, although a powerful tool, its successful use requires thoughtful and reflective application combined with good assessment design.

It was found that the new features available in SPARK^PLUS efficiently facilitated the development of new self‐ and peer assessment processes (assessment of individual work and benchmarking exercises) and improved learning outcomes.

This chapter presents two established pedagogical techniques to increase student engagement, simulations and peer assessment. The use of each technique, its benefits and drawbacks, and how content knowledge and student engagement increase are detailed. While each of the approaches can be utilized independently to create active learning environments, this chapter illustrates the potential to extend these approaches further. An overview of an MBA-level elective on competitive analysis structured around a simulation and peer assessment is presented. The result is a highly interactive and engaging course where the simulation and peer assessments achieve symbiotic benefits. Learning and performance in the simulation is enhanced by the application of competitive analyst reports which are used by peer “clients.” Assessment in turn leads to greater insights to the simulation, and subsequently higher levels of performance on both the simulation and future analysis work. Insights on these instructional methods, their limitations, and potential barriers to adoption are offered with the hope of inspiring others to utilize and experiment with novel approaches for further enhance learner engagement.

This paper synthesizes the extant feedback literature, focusing on how feedback affects an auditor’s learning, performance, and motivation. Performance feedback is an important component in the auditing environment for ensuring quality control and for developing and coaching staff auditors. However, the literature on feedback in the audit environment is fragmented and limited making it difficult to assess its behavioral effects on auditors. This paper has three main objectives. The first is to review some of the influential research in psychology and management to identify key variables and issues that appear to be critical in the study of behavioral consequences of feedback in organizational settings. The second is to review performance feedback research specifically in auditing to identify the areas previously examined and synthesize the findings. The third is to suggest a variety of future research opportunities that may assist in developing an understanding and knowledge of the behavioral effects of feedback on auditors. The literature analysis has significant implications for audit research and practice. In particular, the analysis provides important insights into understanding who, how, and when performance feedback should be given to improve its effectiveness in the audit environment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the teachers implemented innovative feedback approaches in their writing classroom and the extent to which the innovative feedback approaches impacted upon student attitude and performance in writing. In the writing classroom, teacher feedback serves as an assessment as well as a pedagogical tool to enhance the teaching and learning of writing. While there is no shortage of literature on the topic of feedback per se, there is scant research on teachers’ attempts to implement change to conventional feedback practices, as well as the impact of such feedback innovation on student learning. Drawing on data gathered from individual teacher interviews, student questionnaires, student focus group interviews, pre-and post-writing tests and classroom observations, this study seeks to explore two teachers’ change initiative in their writing feedback approaches.

The study used multiple sources of data including individual teacher interviews, student questionnaires and student focus group.

The results suggest that the innovative feedback approaches helped to enhance the motivation and writing performance of the students. The paper concludes with implications and insights to help teachers implement similar feedback innovations in their contexts.

First, the findings suggest that focused written corrective feedback is a viable option for responding to student writing, especially for low proficiency students in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts. Second, teachers might consider the option of removal or delay in the reporting of scores, where appropriate. Third, more intensive training might be necessary to help students improve their peer evaluation skills and their ability to write more constructive comments for their peers.

The significance of the study lies in the contribution it can make to existing writing feedback research that pays insufficient attention to teacher feedback in real classroom contexts, uncovering the process through which teachers attempt to bring improvement to conventional feedback practices, as well as the impact of feedback innovation on student learning in naturally occurring classroom contexts.