“Students’ Perceptions of Written Instructor Feedback on Student Writing”

by Eric Wisz | Xchanges 13.2, Fall 2018

Participant Demographics

Twelve interviews were conducted in total, lasting from 20 to 40 minutes each. By agreeing to volunteer their time to participate in this study, participants demonstrated that they are all highly motivated students who are invested in their learning. Participants range from first-semester freshmen to fifth-year seniors. Ten participants are native-English speakers, and two have first languages that are not English.

Although most participants were recruited from Writing Studies classes, there are a wide variety of majors represented throughout the participants, as the majority of students in these classes are not Technical Writing and Communication majors (the undergraduate major degree offered by the Department of Writing Studies). However, a disproportionate number of Technical Writing and Communication majors are represented, as four of the twelve participants are Technical Writing and Communication majors. As will be discussed later, it is likely that due to the focus of the Technical Writing and Communication major on learning the discursive conventions of technical fields, some Technical Writing and Communication majors prefer more explicit suggestions in their feedback than participants in other majors.

Another population that is disproportionately represented among the participants is student writing consultants at the university’s writing center — five of the participants are writing consultants. One course from which participants were recruited was the consultant training course that all first semester undergraduate consultants are required to take. When consultants were interviewed, they were told to approach the feedback examples as students who had received them from an instructor, not as a consultant working with a writer. They were told to approach the feedback as writers, not consultants, in order to ensure that they were sharing their own perspectives on the feedback, not speculating as to what other students might think of the feedback.