Giving feedback on peers’ concept maps as a learning experience: does quality of reviewed concept maps matter?

Giving feedback to peers can be a powerful learning tool because of the feedback provider’s active cognitive involvement with the products to be reviewed. The quality of peers’ products is naturally an important factor that might influence not only the quality of the feedback that is given, but also the learning arising from this process. This experimental study investigated the effect of the level of quality of the reviewed product on the knowledge acquisition of feedback providers, as well as the role of prior knowledge in this. Dutch secondary-school students (n = 77) were assigned to one of three conditions, which varied in the quality of the learning products (concept maps) on which students had to give feedback while working in an online physics inquiry learning environment. Post-test knowledge scores, the quality of students’ own concept maps and the quality of the feedback given were analyzed to determine any effect of condition on the learning of feedback providers. Students providing feedback on the lower-quality concept maps gave better feedback and had higher post-test scores. There was no interaction with level of prior knowledge. Possible implications for practice and further research directions are discussed.