Chapter XX Assessing the Quality of Online Peer Feedback in L2 Writing

This chapter reports on an instrument that was developed to formatively assess the quality of feedback that second language students give to one another in an online, anonymous, asynchronous learning environment. The Online Peer Feedback (OPF) Assessment was originally developed for a peer online writing center in Japan where student peer advisors jointly compose feedback for a client-writer. The OPF Assessment is composed of two rubrics: (1) a rubric that evaluates the initial feedback drafted by a peer advisor, and (2) a rubric that assesses the contribution that individual peer advisors make to the interactive process of constructing the final feedback for their client-writer. The chapter describes the assessment and discusses its potential uses in a variety of contexts as a formative tool to improve the quality of peer feedback and, ultimately, the writing proficiency of both givers and receivers of the feedback.