Design Story

    Dedi is a first-year undergraduate student at a university in Indonesia. He is required to take a three-credit course in the English language to improve his academic writing skills. In the syllabus, it is stated that he will need to write several essays in various genres, and the approach used is called the process-oriented approach.

    He met Mr. Hervin at the first session of the class. He likes the way Mr. Hervin facilitated the course. He is very clear in his explanation and gives detailed examples. He is also an energetic language instructor. The process-oriented approach Mr. Hervin uses in the course has multiple repeated steps. He and his writing buddy will give and receive peer feedback after writing their first draft. Dedi was a bit worried. He was afraid that he could not give appropriate constructive comments. Also, correcting other people’s work, he thought, can initiate a conflict, and he tends to avoid conflicts. When he read the course module further, he discovered that he needed to make several revisions to his essay after receiving feedback from the instructor and other students. In his opinion, this is a lengthy process, and he will need to sacrifice some of his spare time for this course. He has already had low motivation to continue the course.

The instructor mentioned that the students would do most of the activities, such as giving peer feedback and revising their essays, on an online platform and outside the classroom hours. During class hours, the instructor and the students will discuss writing techniques, a good way of giving peer feedback, and how to use the feedback in revising the students’ essays. The news from Mr. Hervin gave Dedi a degree of relief. At home, he can spend more time reflecting on his writing buddy’s essay. He hopes that after the reflection, he can provide good feedback, and with good constructive feedback conflict can be avoided. However, he still thought that this approach used, even with the online platform, was still too tedious and boring.

    At home after class, Dedi wanted to submit his first essay draft. He registered to the online platform and then signed in. He thought that the registration process was quite user-friendly, like popular social media registrations. Inside the platform, he saw the images of his two writing buddies, and they had already submitted their essay drafts, as seen from the description below their photographs. He also saw learning resources in PDF and video format. He thought that these learning resources could help him in writing and providing peer feedback. When he explored further, he saw his badge collection, which was still empty, and a leaderboard with his name at the bottom. He then submitted his essay, and automatically, after a ping sound, a badge popped up in his badge collection, his score in the leaderboard changed, and his position went up. He was very happy with these changes, and he thought the badges and leaderboard created a difference and increased his motivation to do the writing assignments.

    The next day, he decided to read his writing buddies' essays. After reading one of the essays, he reflected for an hour and came up with some suggestions. At first, he was unsure whether his suggestions were appropriate and constructive enough. Mr. Hervin has discussed appropriate and constructive feedback in the class, but Dedi forgot to take notes. Fortunately, with the learning resources provided on the online mobile platform, Dedi could read the PDFs, watch the videos, and connect them with the material covered by Mr. Hervin in class. After reading, watching, and reflecting more, he was sure his peer feedback was appropriate and constructive. He clicked the send feedback button, and almost the same time, after the familiar ping sound, a new badge appeared, and his name went up even more on the leaderboard.

    Later at night, he saw a notification on his online application. He received feedback from his two writing buddies. Their feedback, in his opinion, was very useful for his essay’s revision for the second-round drafting. On the bottom of the feedback page, he saw a “send badge for the feedback” button. When he clicked on it, three options were floating: gold, silver, and bronze badges. Since he thought that the feedback was very useful, he chose gold badges for their feedback. After that, their names rose slightly on the leaderboard, and Dedi was happy for them. The notification also told him that he received two gold badges from his writing buddies for his peer feedback, and he could also see that his badges collection had added up. When he checked on the leaderboard, he was on the top.

    After using this online application for several days, he felt that it helped him to have more time to reflect on his peer feedback to writing buddies. It also provided him with the learning resources he needed to write and give peer feedback properly. The badges in the application can boost his motivation and engagement to do the steps in the process-oriented approach in writing his essays.