When do students provide more peer feedback? The roles of performance and prior feedback experiences

Students benefit from receiving and providing peer feedback, but the degree of participation limits the benefit. Further, students sometimes resist participation, providing few or only short comments. Prior researchers have examined the role of general attitudes toward peer feedback in limiting participation. However, little research has examined how peer feedback experiences predict the subsequent amount of feedback that students provide to peers. Data on peer feedback experiences and behaviors across multiple assignments were taken from students across two psychology courses (N = 360), two biology courses (N = 483), and one astronomy course (N = 170). The zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) regression analyses reveal that receiving fewer critical peer comments in the prior assignment, recognition for higher quality feedback in the prior assignment, and stronger performance on the current assignment predicted higher participation in peer feedback, but norm-setting did not appear to have a role. Implications for practitioners are discussed.