Automated Feedback in a Blended Learning Environment: Student Experience and Development

Nowadays, e-platforms designed specifically to cater for academic writing offer a new range of feedback possibilities for instructors. On our writing courses we use automated feedback, that is, metalinguistic comments generated within the e-platform on skill-building assignments in the form of multiple-choice exercises pertaining to the surface-level features of writing: grammar, punctuation, and citation conventions. In this chapter we explore the impact that automated feedback has on student experience of learning and development of skills pertaining to these features from beginner to advanced courses. Some of the key features of automated feedback which we consider are immediacy, metalinguistic explanations, and links to additional readings and exercises. We suggest that surface-level features can successfully be taught as part of academic writing courses, but the focus should be on improving writing fluency rather than language proficiency. Automated feedback on surface-level features is a particularly successful form of feedback on both our beginner and intermediate courses, but it performs less successfully on our advanced-level courses.