Electronic feedback on Google Docs for ESL college students

The increasing prominence of technology has given rise to new ways for writing teachers in higher education to give feedback electronically. Specifically, this presentation focuses on electronic written feedback (e-feedback) given to a group of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) community college students. Adopting grounded theory as the methodology (Charmaz, 2006) and a tripartite definition of written feedback as the conceptual framework (Chong, 2018), the presentation reports 93 students’ perception of e-feedback on Google Docs from two sources: students’ written reflections and semistructured, focus group interviews. Findings indicate five conceptual categories, including (1) giving efeedback, (2) reading e-feedback, (3) responding to e-feedback, (4) dialogic e-feedback, and (5) colors of e-feedback. Pedagogical implications related to how e-feedback practices could incorporate technical (how teachers go about giving feedback), socio-emotional (how relational and emotional factors affect students’ uptake of feedback), and personal (how students’ individual differences affect their uptake of feedback) considerations will be discussed. Copyright © 2019 Continuing Professional Development Symposium for Hong Kong University Language Centres.