A proposed methodology for investigating chatbot effects in peer review

Teaching academic writing skills consumes a lot of time for teachers. One way to save some of this time and support students’ development of writing skills is to supplement teacher-student interaction with a chatbot. I developed such a chatbot, DD, to help post-secondary writers develop a thesis statement for an argumentative essay and to improve their feedback when in the role of a peer reviewer of classmates’ draft essays. The study analyzes student-chatbot interactions in a lower division course as background for developing methodological procedures that examine students’ engagement patterns with a chatbot. Analyses of student-chatbot data reveal students participating in this study tended to be overconfident about their learning. Furthermore, students reported a positive experience when they conversed with the chatbot. Several pedagogical implications for chatbot-guided writing instructions and uses of learning technology are addressed.