Medical education students’ processing and use of (discrepant) peer feedback

Van Meenen, Florence [UCL] Masson, Nicolas [UCL] Verschuren, Franck [UCL] Coertjens, Liesje [UCL]

Peer feedback is described in the literature as a powerful lever for learning (Hattie, 2009). Unfortunately, little is known on how students process peer feedback (PF) and use it to improve their work. The present research seeks to understand how students use (or ignore) discrepant feedback elements. In addition, it aims an in-depth understanding of why certain strategies for revision are (not) effective. Thirty second-year bachelor students in medical education took part in the study. The procedure described by Bolzer et al. (2015) was partly replicated. Participants were invited to (1) read a short essay on an air pollutant, (2) read the feedback provided by two peers (which contained discrepant elements) and (3) revise the essay. Students’ eye movements were measured with the eye tracker EyeLink 1000. Subsequently, the participants carried out a Cued Retrospective Reporting [CRR] (Brand-Gruwel et al., 2017). For the quantitative data analyses, two dependent variables were chosen : (1) eye tracking measures (Lai et al., 2013) and (2) quality of the revised essay on a 20-point scale. Regarding the qualitative data analyses, participants' verbalisations were transcribed and divided into idea units (Cerdàn et Vidal-Abarca, 2008). Each idea unit was coded using the framework by Garino (2019): affect, understanding, valuing, applying and assessment of learning. Sub-categories were added using an inductive coding method (Miles & Huberman, 1994). The analyses are in progress and detailed results will be presented at the conference.