| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of online peer assessment upon the sixth-graders’ learning of writing. First of all, an online writing website- Du Lai Du Wang writing field, was set up to promote learners’ meaningful writing, through which the learners can write articles, evaluate peer’s compositions, revise drafts, and hand in writings easily and smoothly. In addition to investigating the practical influence of the writing website on the sixth-graders’ writing skill, writing attitude and evaluation of the curriculum, the pupils’ performances in the assessing process were also analyzed to probe how peer assessment affected the learning of writing.
A one-group pretest-posttest design was implemented in the study, using 31 sixth-graders from certain elementary school in Taipei to engage in the online writing activity. There were five-time online writing activities during the experiment period, and each online writing activity took two weeks (40 minutes per class; two classes per week). The subjects were divided into eight heterogeneous groups and each of them yielded five compositions during the experiment period.
After the ten-week experimental treatment, the integrated results derived from quantitative and qualitative research data were inducted as followings: (1) the students’ writing skills improved dramatically in argumentation, organization, language use and holistic score also improved significantly; (2) the students’ improved attitude toward writing reflected a significant increase in scores on the challenge dimension of the questionnaire; (3) evaluating the results, most of the students’ remarks were corrective, especially on word accuracy and punctuation marks; the expression of remarks became more concrete through the increased practices in peer assessment; further, the expression of remarks were clear and correct in general; (4) in terms of satisfaction with the curriculum, the students highly evaluated the writing curriculum, the online learning activities and the interface design of the website ; (5) the instructor’s perception revealed appreciation of the online peer assessment as a teaching method for writing. According to the aforementioned, it has been demonstrated that the learner-centered peer assessment could provide authentic readers for students. The advantages of an online writing environment supported the students’ learning and the teacher was also satisfied with the curriculum design and teaching effects. | en_US |