Prosociality to the test: The case of peer feedback in higher education

Abstract

This paper studies educational prosociality (“bienveillance” in French), as operationalized in a sustainable continuous assessment for learning design in a Swiss university. Following an initial production, 64 students wrote feedback on their peers’ work. Students answered an item about their perception of feedbacks’ prosociality. Then, working in 30 forums, students brought forth recommendations to write prosocial feedback. We analysed the variations of prosociality perceptions for each feedback, the links between feedback contents and prosociality perceptions, and students’ recommendations. Finally, we discuss the subjectivity and situatedness of prosociality perceptions.