Huifeng Mu’s scientific contributions

Peer feedback can be highly effective for learning, but only when students give detailed and helpful feedback. Peer feedback systems often support student reviewers through instructor-generated comment prompts that include various scaffolding features. However, there is little research in the context of higher education on which features tend to be used in practice nor to which extent typical uses impact comment length and comment helpfulness. This study explored the relative frequencies of twelve specific features (divided into metacognitive, motivational, strategic, and conceptual scaffolds) that could be included as scaffolding comment prompts and their relationship to comment length and helpfulness. A large dataset from one online peer review system was used, which involved naturalistic course data from 281 courses at 61 institutions. The degree of presence of each feature was coded in the N = 2883 comment prompts in these courses. Since a given comment prompt often contained multiple features, statistical models were used to tease apart the unique relationship of each comment prompt feature with comment length and helpfulness. The metacognitive scaffolds of prompts for elaboration and setting expectations, and the motivational scaffolds of binary questions were positively associated with mean comment length. The strategic scaffolds of requests for strength identification and example were positively associated with mean comment helpfulness. Only the conceptual scaffold of subdimension descriptions were positively associated with both. Interestingly, instructors rarely included the most useful features in comment prompts. The effects of comment prompt features were larger for comment length than comment helpfulness. Practical implications for designing more effective comment prompts are discussed.