Date of Award

Spring 2023

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Educational Studies

First Advisor

Lucas Vasconcelos

Abstract

National assessments on writing show that student proficiency is low in part because many high school students lack revision skills. Compounding the problem is that as classroom sizes grow, teachers have less time to give the feedback that students need to improve. Peer feedback shows promise in being able to solve the feedback problem, but it must be carefully structured to be effective. The purpose of this action research was to evaluate the impact of gamified peer feedback in a high school English Language Arts classroom at Southern Charter High School. Three research questions guided this study: (1) What impact does gamified peer feedback have on the quality of peer feedback given by tenth grade ELA students at Southern Charter High school? (2) What impact does the type of peer feedback given and received have on their writing improvement? (3) What are the effects of gamified peer feedback on low versus high ability students’ writing improvement?

The study utilized a predominantly quantitative multi-method design approach with 28 student participants in a tenth grade Honors English Language Arts class. Students experienced 12 class periods of a gamified peer feedback innovation in conjunction with writing three essays during the semester. Qualitative data including peer feedback comments and feedback discussion videos were collected in addition to quantitative data from analytic scoring rubrics and analyzed to determine the effect on writing improvement. Results indicated that gamification improved the quality of peer feedback that students gave and that led to improved writing. Students of lower ability demonstrated more writing improvement than students of higher ability. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Rights

© 2023, Kerise Amaris Broome

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