Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volume 68, October 2013, Pages 404-415
Computers & Education

E-portfolios supporting primary students' writing performance and peer feedback

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2013.06.004Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Students' writing performance through e-portfolios statistically increased over time.

  • Students provided more thorough, corrective peer feedback in e-portfolios over time.

  • Average and high-ability students benefited from peer feedback in e-portfolios.

Abstract

E-portfolios show great promise for supporting students' writing performance and facilitating peer feedback, but empirical research of their use in primary education is limited. To address this gap, a yearlong study was conducted in a 4th grade primary class in Cyprus implementing e-portfolios (n = 20) to help students document their progress and send feedback to peers. A generic, open source weblog tool localized into Greek was used as an e-portfolio tool. Data sources included 176 student-essays, 1306 instances of peer feedback, students pre- and post-tests on writing performance, nine videotaped student interviews and one teacher interview. A paired samples t-test analysis showed that there was a statistically significant difference between students' pre-test (M = 62.6, SD = 9.82, n = 20) and post-test (M = 76.5, SD = 12.6, n = 20) on writing performance (t (19) = −8.03, p < .01). A repeated measures analysis of variance on e-portfolio artifacts showed that there were learning gains with respect to students' writing performance over time [F(4.01, 76.25) = 31.59, p < .01, η2 = 0.89]. A qualitative analysis of students' comments showed that students provided more thorough peer feedback over time and became gradually more capable of providing corrective feedback. The qualitative analysis of student interviews provided evidence that students valued peer feedback in their portfolios. The analysis of the teacher interview showed that average and high-ability students benefited the most from peer feedback. This study provided evidence that e-portfolios can support the development of students' writing performance and peer feedback skills in the context of primary school essay writing. Instructional implications for portfolio implementation are offered.

Introduction

How can we help students become better writers? Can process portfolios positively affect students' writing performance and if so, how? For at least the past two decades teachers have been trying to find ways to increase students' writing performance, to help students become not only better but also more motivated, reflective writers, proactive in their efforts to learn, aware of their strengths and limitations and capable of incorporating feedback to improve their work. In an article with the title: “How portfolios motivate reluctant writers”, an elementary school teacher in the US demonstrated how personal portfolios made her fourth grade students in a writing pullout program want to write. She wanted her students to select and include samples of their work they felt good about, to gain ownership in the portfolio process and to evaluate their own work. By December students were enthusiastically creating their own writing portfolios, they were setting individual, specific goals, they were including rough and final drafts of writing projects and they were reflecting on their work. As this teacher reported, “students evaluated their progress each time they looked at previous rough drafts…and participated in peer review. Gradually they developed the habits of reflecting on their learning and tracking their progress” (Frazier & Paulson, 1992, p. 64). This case study represents a quintessential example of numerous anecdotal evidence, often merely based on teachers' observations, demonstrating the connection between the use of process portfolio as a pedagogical strategy and an improvement of elementary school students' writing performance.

Portfolios have gradually become a widely accepted method which focuses on process over product, often assessing the written proficiency over time (Blair & Takayoshi, 1997). This was a result of a shift from product to process approaches in teaching writing, which has led to a shift from indirect to direct procedures in evaluating writing ability. According to Wyatt and Looper (1999), when the writing portfolio was introduced in the English/Language Arts field, it became a huge success. At that time, around 1999, “the portfolio for assessment was dominant at basically all levels of English education from early elementary through higher education” (Wyatt & Looper, 1999, p. 6). Writing portfolios were seen as a way of “enhancement of performance through evaluative feedback and reflection” (Lucas, 1992, p. 1) and have been widely used in the US in the Language Arts curriculum (Herman and Winters, 1994, Purves, 1996, Zubizarreta, 2004).

The implementation of peer feedback was an instructional strategy that was also used, irrespectively of portfolios, to positively affect students' writing. Previous empirical studies on peer feedback showed that it can be valuable for increasing students' writing performance, both in traditional classrooms (Gennip et al., 2009, Gielen et al., 2010, Li et al., 2012, Olson, 1990, Yu and Wu, 2013) and in the context of portfolios (Barbera, 2009, Barrett, 2007, Chang et al., 2013, Chang et al., 2011, Chang et al., 2012, Ellison and Wu, 2008, Liu et al., 2004), even though studies concentrated on secondary and higher education rather than on young writers.

Can e-portfolios be an answer to this search for ways to motivate young students to become better writers who are capable of incorporating feedback to improve their work? We have indications that e-portfolios can support the development of students' writing performance (Meyer et al., 2010, Reidel et al., 2003), that peer feedback can positively affect students' writing performance (Gennip et al., 2009, Gielen et al., 2010, Li et al., 2012, Olson, 1990, Yu and Wu, 2013) and that e-portfolios can support students' peer feedback skills in higher education (Barbera, 2009, Ellison and Wu, 2008, Liu et al., 2004) and secondary education (Barrett, 2007, Chang et al., 2011, Chang et al., 2012, Chang et al., 2013). However, empirical research associating e-portfolios, writing performance and peer feedback is limited and mostly comes from the context of secondary and higher education. Are these findings applicable to primary education? To what extend can e-portfolios provide an effective pedagogical strategy to support writing performance and constructive peer feedback in the context of essay writing at the primary school level? The present study attempts to address questions that focus on the association of e-portfolios with writing performance and peer feedback, with young students attending primary school.

Section snippets

What are process e-portfolios?

Process portfolio pedagogy, the creation of portfolios by students, has been in existence in education in the Language Arts domain since the early 1990s. There are different types of student created portfolios in the K-12 context. The literature differentiates between two main types of portfolios: showcase (best work) and process (progress) (Nitko, 2001). A showcase portfolio focuses on final accomplishments. In contrast, a process portfolio is defined as a systematic and organized collection

Research design

The study followed a case-study design, in the sense that it was an in-depth exploration of a bounded process, in this case e-portfolio integration into the Language Arts curriculum, based on an extensive data collection process (Creswell, 2005). The purpose of the study was to examine whether there were learning gains in students' writing performance and peer feedback skills over time.

Participants

The participants of the study were 24 fourth-grade students of an intact class in an urban, public primary

Results and discussion

This section presents the findings of the study organized in sub-sections. Section 4.1 focuses on the first research question, examining how primary students' writing performance changed over time. It focuses on the statistical analysis of students' writing performance using Paired Samples t-test for students' writing as this was evaluated with a pre-test and post-test administered at the beginning and end of the academic year, and a repeated measures analysis of variance for students' writing

Conclusion

The main contribution of this study in the field of Educational Technology is that it provided the systematic evidence that was lacking from the literature showing that e-portfolios can support the development of primary students' writing performance and peer feedback skills in essay writing. Rich quantitative and qualitative data on students' writing performance, peer feedback skills and perceptions on peer feedback were collected and analyzed in the context of the study. The analysis of

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