Learning Across Sites: New tools, infrastructures and practices - Earli

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Productive e- feedback in higher education 253
apprehension is reduced when seeing that peers also struggle. Sharing comments
gives a rich source of understanding course content and what constitutes good
argumentation. Some students, however, find the demand of publishing unfinished
texts very stressful.
A crucial factor in our two cases is that technology facilitates feedback as a joint
activity; thus making interactive processes transparent. One significant difference
between the two sites is that while several revisions may be posted in the master’s
programme, only first drafts and comments are posted in law. Thus law students
have less opportunities of seeing how texts are being improved by revision. In the
blended learning system in law the initial discussion groups provide a ‘temporarily
shared social reality’ (Rommetveit, 1974) as they negotiate the interpretation of
the assignment. Students then produce individual texts before getting comments
from students and TAs. They do not, however, go that extra step and improve
their products.
The quality of commenting
The quality of teacher/TA feedback improves in e- feedback practice because
written comments are publicly available not just to the students but also to colleagues.
Students, however, are not consistent in their evaluation of the effect on
peer commenting. Tannacito (2004) found that students preferred e- response to
face- to- face response primarily because they actively used the written record of
suggestions in revision. This is also the case at our two sites. Education students
use their e- stored sequences of feedback when working on their thesis and law
students when preparing for exams. The importance of training students in giving
feedback is brought out in a number of research studies (Sljuismans, 2002;
Tannacito, 2004) and our study confirms this. It may be argued, however, that
the chances of students learning how to give feedback by imitating good models,
is an advantage of an open- access system, and may substitute or at least supplement
training sessions.
Enculturation: does it mean productive learning
The learning cycle of reading, writing, getting and giving feedback, revising and
rewriting is, to a large extent, about enculturation and appropriating the words
of others. The fact that law students are doing better in exams indicates that the
study cycle, with the massive commenting on student texts, has been successful
in enculturating students into legal genres and ways of arguing, and has in this
sense been productive. This also seems to be the case in the master’s programme
in Education, but the final material product here is a master’s thesis, and quality
assessment only comes at the end of the year- long process. Nevertheless, in
our view, enculturation is more than a neat, one- way process. Enculturation is a
dynamic process, and whenever a new person is introduced in a context, the culture
changes. A profound understanding of dialogue, reciprocity and co- production of