CMC SUMMARY: mastura

The title of the journal:Peer Feedback in Synchronous Writing Environments: A Case Study in French. Heift, T. and Caws, C. (2000). Peer Fedback in Synchronous Writing Environments: A case Study in French. Educational technology & Society. Vol 3 (3). http://www.ifets.info/journals/3_3c01.pdf

Introduction
As its title suggests, this journal focuses on synchronous Computer- Mediated Communication which looks into the patterns of interaction among participants in a synchronous writing environment. The concentrated aspect of the interaction patterns in computer-networked writing environment is on the peer feedback, either it appears in the form of social or cognitive acknowledgement. This writing environment provided by Local Area Network (LAN) technology allows learners of the second language to participate anonymously in group discussions and increases collaboraboration among the learners.


Methodology
Feedback is significant to learning in any setting. In a face-to-face learning environment, the instructor plays an active role as she/he is the one who gives feedback, and the one who leads the discussion. However, in Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) the instructor remains distant and only acts as a facilitator to the learning process. Thus, the questions that extend this research are:
· Do some students take on the role of the instructor in providing feedback to the peers and leading the discussion?
· Are students with a higher than average command of the second language frequent contributors?
· Finally, how do the relative language skills of each learner influence the overall group dynamic?



The study has been done on twelve students of French as a foreign language class who, for one semester, spend one hour of class instruction using Aspects, a synchronous writing environment for the Macintosh. All of the participants are female and English native speakers except for one student being a francophone who left Quebec at ten-year old age. She has an excellent oral skills and an above-average written skills.


The study employs the chat box provided by Aspects. Aspects fits nicely for students to brainstorm on a particular topic or to discuss a document in small groups. The procedure for data collection is before the on-line writing session, students have to read four articles which are Censorship, The Role of Women and Children in Western Society, Values of the Canadian Familyin the 1990s, and Destruction of Nature over Time. During the on-line writing session, they have to discuss the points raised by each article through argumentative writing. Then, the class is divided into four groups (A, B, C, D) with each student logs in using an anonymous name. Each group has to choose three out of four topics to be discussed in the on-line writing session.


Data analysis
This research is both quantitative and qualitative studies of synchronous writing environment. The data are analysed in three steps. Firstly, the total number of contributions for each student and group during the on-line writing session is counted. Secondly, the messages are classified with respect to patterns of interaction among four main categories: 1) peer feedback (cognitive and social acknowledgement), 2) comments on content, 3) comments on task, and 4) off-topic. Finally, the messages sent by the instructor to each group are counted. For the quantitative analysis, number of words per message for each student and group is counted. For the pattern of interaction analysis, the number of sentences is counted, not the number of messages. This is essential because the data contain messages with multiple sentences, some belong to different class of interaction.


Quantitative analysis shows that students write an average of 55 messages during the one hour session. Pattern of interaction analysis shows the average number of sentences for peer feedback is 19.3%. Students exhibit a tendency to provide more feedback in cognitive than social acknowledgement. In addition to that, the data show that students who provide the most feedback also write the highest number of total messages in each group. Futhermore, they are the ones who lead the discussion. Those “discussion leaders” provided the comments on three areas: content, comments on the task, and social/cognitive acknowlegdement and they write the fewest off-topic messages. Whereas, other students write solely on content, or content and off-topic, or content and social/cognitive acknowledgement only. There are students from group A and D who do not provide any peer feedback. This suggest that the dynamics in group B and C differed from those A and D.


Findings
The analysis suggests that in groups having variying degrees of second language knowledge, that is, groups where less knowledgeable students are coupled with more knowledgeable students such as in group A, produces fewest or none off-topic messages. The group also get the fewest intervention by the instructor. In equally knowledgeable groups such as group B and C, peer feedback is more balanced among the group members and the instructor intervenes more in the discussion. While in group A, the francophone who is the group’s “discussion leader” had the highest language skills but this was not confirmed with the other three discussion leaders, suggesting that language skill alone does not determine the relative frequency of peer feedback.
This findings show that students do provide cognitive and social acknowledgement to their peers in synchronous writing environment. It has been found that students who provide the most social and cognitive acknowledgement are also the highest contributors, although their second language skills are not necessarily superior. It is also an advantage when less knowledgeable students are grouped with more knowledgeable ones, because they influence the pattern of interaction in the groups and less off-topic messages are produced and less instructor’s messages are sent.