A Journal of Culture, English Language, Teaching & Literature ISSN 1414-3320 (Print), ISSN 2502-4914 (Online) Vol. 18 No.2; December 2018 Copyright © Soegijapranata Catholic University, Indonesia The Correlation between Online Peer Review and Academic Writing Students’ Learning Styles 1Emilia Ninik Aydawati, 2Dwi Rukmini, 3Dwi Anggani Linggar Bharati and 4Sri Wuli Fitriati 1,2,3,4English Education Program, Post Graduate Study, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Semarang, Indonesia email: 1emilianinik@gmail.com; 2wiwidwirukmini@mail.unnes.ac.id; 3dwi_anggani@mail.unnes.ac.id; 4sriwuli.fitriati@mail.unnes.ac.id Received: 11-12-2017 Accepted: 20-06-2018 Published: 22-12-2018 https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v18i2; ISSN: 1412-3320 (print); ISSN: 2502-4914 (online); Accredited; DOAJ The Correlation between Online Peer Review and Academic Writing Students’ Learning Styles 1Emilia Ninik Aydawati, 2Dwi Rukmini, 3Dwi Anggani Linggar Bharati and 4Sri Wuli Fitriati 1emilianinik@gmail.com; 2wiwidwirukmini@mail.unnes.ac.id; 3dwi_anggani@mail.unnes.ac.id; 4sriwuli.fitriati@mail.unnes.ac.id 1,2,3,4English Education Program, Post Graduate Study, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Semarang, Indonesia Abstract: Peer review studies have been done for years. It has been found that by having these activities, learners will get benefits from the communication with the peer who can give them input to improve their writing performance. Peer review can be done face to face or online. Face to face peer review is done synchronously where two students are having discussion on their essay, whereas online peer review can be done synchronously or asynchronously. This preliminary study investigates how the application of synchronous online peer review in Academic Writing class can be implemented to help them to do revision and improve their writing skills. The participants of this study is 50 students of academic writing class from two different class. This is an experimental study where the students were treated to get peer review activities from the software which is uploaded in web. They did the practice twice with the shuffled questions. This was aimed that they would be ready to give review. Pre- test and post-test were conducted and Gracian questionnaire to know their learning styles was uploaded in the web for them to fill in order to know their learning styles. it was found out that there are some improvement and there is correlation between their academic skills and the learning styles. Key words: writing class, online peer review, learning styles Abstrak: Peer Review dalam kelas Menulis telah dilakukan tatap muka dan baru-baru ini peer review online telah dilakukan. 246 Celt: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching & Literature, Volume 18, Number 2, December 2018, pp. 245 - 253 https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v18i2; ISSN: 1412-3320 (print); ISSN: 2502-4914 (online); Accredited; DOAJ Berdasarkan beberapa penelitian, online peer review terbukti membantu siswa merevisi makalah mereka dan meningkatkan keterampilan menulis mereka. Penelitian ini menyelidiki korelasi online peer review dan gaya belajar. Sampel penelitian ini terdiri dari 50 mahasiswa dari Academic Writing Class. Peer review dilakukan secara serentak. Pada awal dan akhir penelitian, pre tes-dan post test diberikan untuk menentukan apakah peer review memberikan efek positif pada pengembangan kemampuan menulis siswa EFL. Sebelum melakukan peer review online, para siswa dilatih untuk melakukan peer review. Mereka berlatih memberikan komentar berdasarkan model dan pedomannya. Hasilnya menunjukkan bahwa dalam melakukan peer review online, siswa lebih fokus pada tata bahasa daripada konten. Selain itu, peer review juga meningkatkan keterampilan menulis siswa, baik tata bahasa maupun konten. Juga, mereka membuat revisi yang menyarankan bahwa peer review secara online dapat membantu siswa EFL menyadari potensi revisi efektif mereka dalam tugas akhir mereka. Kata-kata kunci: Kelas Menulis, Peer review online, Gaya belajar INTRODUCTION Studies describing peer review has been done for decades. Another study on peer assessment model designed in collaborative learning has been done by and the findings showed that peer assessment model was in line with the collaborative learning design and it provided an opportunity upon pre- service English teachers’ genre based writing competence increase and problem solving and the model was suitable, adaptable and functional to reduce the conventional assessment in order to gain the reflected learning effectiveness (Sumekto, 2016). Some studies have examined a variety of research questions, which can be categorized into three main areas. They are studies describing the activities done in peer review activities, the effect of peer review and the attitudes of students towards the peer review activities (Ferris, 2003). She describes the studies that have been done in 1990s. Some studies on the peer review characteristics have shown that students with collaborative type improve their writing skills. Mangelsdorf & Schlumberger (1992 as cited in Ferris, 2003) finds that there are three stance types identified: Prescriptive, Interpretive, and Collaborative that Aydawati. E.N., Rukmini, D., Bharati, D.A.L. & Fitriati, S.W. The Correla- 247 tion between Online Peer Review in Academic Writing Students’ Learning Styles https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v18i2; ISSN: 1412-3320 (print); ISSN: 2502-4914 (online); Accredited; DOAJ students take in responding to a sample student essay and students who assumed the collaborative stance got higher course grades. A study on the application of peer feedback activities shows that there are influences of the pair interaction to revisions and development of writing aspects. In the first term, feedback provided by collaborative learners and expert learners in pair interaction contributed to the revision changes of their partners’ writings. Feedback provided by dominant learner had little contribution to revision changes of writing of another dominant learner. Besides, collaborative pairs and expert/novice pairs had better revised writing than other pairs who were under other patterns (Mufiz, Fitriati, & Sukrisno, 2017). Meanwhile, another study done by Astrid, Rukmini, Sofwan & Fitriati ( 2017) found that students either having low or high writing anxiety had lack of confidence, ability and management control in delivering appropriate feedbacks, but students showed active participation and independency. ONLINE PEER REVIEW Online peer review is the peer review which is conducted using computer. It can be done when there is internet connection. There are two ways that students can do when applying online peer review. first, they can do it at the same time with their peer (synchronously) and at different time (asynchronously). Theory on syncronous learning is proposed by Haslam (2017). He defines synchronous online classes as those that require students and instructors to be online at the same time. Lectures, discussions, and presentations occur at a specific hour. All students must be online at that specific hour in order to participate. In order to be successful, a learner is responsible for his or her learning. Therefore, individuals should know what their own learning so that they can contribute to their learning process. It is in the learner’s hand to use different ways and develop the learning styles to some extent. LEARNING STYLES A study on the correlation between learning styles and writer’s self- assessment has been done in Irania (Sahragard & Mallahi, 2014). The study attempted to explore the preferred language learning styles of a group of 248 Celt: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching & Literature, Volume 18, Number 2, December 2018, pp. 245 - 253 https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v18i2; ISSN: 1412-3320 (print); ISSN: 2502-4914 (online); Accredited; DOAJ Iranian EFL learners and differences in the styles of learners with different L2 writing proficiency levels. Moreover, the study examined differences between the more proficient and the less proficient writers' self-assessment. The participants were 30 Iranian upper-intermediate EFL students learning English at a language institute. The necessary data were collected through Willing (1988) Language Learning Styles Questionnaire, a writing self- assessment checklist developed by the researchers based on Paulus (1999) grading rubric, and the students' written compositions. As for data collection, the students were asked to answer the learning styles questionnaire and to do a writing task and finally to assess their own writings by filling out the self- assessment checklist. Meanwhile, Grasha (1996) explains that there are six different types of learning styles as follows. First is independent. These learners who like to think for themselves confident in their learning abilities prefer to learn content that they feel is important choose to work alone on projects than with others likes a maximum of choice and flexibility, minimum of structure. Second is avoidant. They are not enthusiastic about learning do not participate uninterested and/or overwhelmed does not want to be called on in class. Third is collaborative. They learn by sharing ideas and talents cooperate and like to work with others likes discussion in class and group projects. The fourth is dependent. They are little intellectual curiosity and learn only what required view teacher is and peers as sources of structure and support look for authority figures to set guidelines likes clear deadlines and instructions. The fifth is competitive. They learn material in order to perform better than others feel must compete for rewards like to be center of attention and receive recognition for their accomplishments and the last is participant. They are good citizens and enjoy going to class take part in course activities as much as possible eager to do the required and optional requirements motivated. To classify learners’ learning styles, Grasha has made a questionnaire consisting of 60 items to classify learners’ learning styles. METHODOLOGY Since this is an experimental research. This qualitative method is applied to get better understand the processes involved in the actual application of peer review during the experimental phase. An experiment is conducted in order to investigate whether or not synchronous online peer review can enhance academic writing skills of students with different learning styles Aydawati. E.N., Rukmini, D., Bharati, D.A.L. & Fitriati, S.W. The Correla- 249 tion between Online Peer Review in Academic Writing Students’ Learning Styles https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v18i2; ISSN: 1412-3320 (print); ISSN: 2502-4914 (online); Accredited; DOAJ (Independent, collaborative and participant). The students who participated in the experiment (both in the pilot and main studies) will be asked to do the peer review activities seriously for the success of this study. In addition, I will make the aims and objectives of synchronous and asynchronous online peer review is clear to the participants of this study. DISCUSSION In doing peer review activities from the web, students need guidelines and instructions clearly as there is no one who they can ask about when they do the practice. The step by step practices of online peer review both synchronous and asynchronous make the students understand how to do the peer review. Besides, they also become familiar with the composition skills such as how to construct hooks, thesis statement, topic sentence and concluding sentence. Meanwhile, when the students practice to review the grammar based on the kinds of grammar skills like the kinds of clauses, run on sentences, subject verb agreement, noun form, verb form, pronoun form, pronoun reference, punctuation, it is assumed that they become more alert. The number of the participants is 56 students from academic writing class A and Cass B. However, complete data were got from 42 students. Some of them (2 students) did not finish their academic writing course. They dropped in the middle of the semester. There are 6 students, who did not submit their final draft of the pretest. Thus, they should be dropped. There are 4 students, who did not fill in the questionnaire for classifying them based on their learning styles based on Grasha’s learning styles’ classification which consist six criteria. Table1: Correlation value of synchronous online peer review Learning style N Score increase Correlation value Avoidant 11 6.91 0.618 Independent 6 6.8 0.899 Participative 17 2.29 0.796 Competitive 3 2.33 0.80 Dependent 4 2.75 0.990 Collaborative 6 2.75 0.929 250 Celt: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching & Literature, Volume 18, Number 2, December 2018, pp. 245 - 253 https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v18i2; ISSN: 1412-3320 (print); ISSN: 2502-4914 (online); Accredited; DOAJ The table above shows that the increase of score of pretest and posttest is quite big for avoidant and independent students with the score increase around 7, while for students with other learning styles show that the increase is around 2 to 3. It seems that both avoidant and independent students get the advantage of the practice of synchronous online peer review. Table2: Correlation value of asynchronous online peer review Learning style N Score increase Correlation value Avoidant 11 2.09 0.813 Independent 6 3.166 0.790 Participative 17 1.235 0.779 Competitive 3 3.33 0.9025 Dependent 4 0.25 0.997 Collaborative 6 2.33 0.971 When doing asynchronous peer review students show a bit increase in their posttest score with the lowest of 0.25 for dependent students and 3.33 for competitive students. The correlation value is quite big for all the students with six different learning styles. It is around 0.8 to 0.9. This means that there is a correlation between learning styles and the practice of asynchronous online peer review. Table 3: Correlation value of synchronous and asynchronous online peer review Learning style N Correlation value (Synchronous) Correlation value (Asynchronous) Avoidant 11 0.618 0.813 Independent 6 0.899 0.790 Participative 17 0.796 0.779 Competitive 3 0.80 0.9025 Dependent 4 0.990 0.997 Collaborative 6 0.929 0.971 When the correlation value between synchronous and asynchronous online peer review, it can be concluded that for those with avoidant and competitive, asynchronous online peer review is more suitable for them as the Aydawati. E.N., Rukmini, D., Bharati, D.A.L. & Fitriati, S.W. The Correla- 251 tion between Online Peer Review in Academic Writing Students’ Learning Styles https://doi.org/10.24167/celt.v18i2; ISSN: 1412-3320 (print); ISSN: 2502-4914 (online); Accredited; DOAJ correlation value is higher when they apply asynchronous rather than synchronous peer review. CONCLUSION From the results of experimental studies on online peer review conducted in a synchronous and synchronous manner, it can be concluded that students can conduct systematic peer reviews because training has been conducted to do peer review online. From the results of the FGD with the participants it can be concluded that they average the activities of using a mobile phone or computer so that the training can be done whenever they want. Besides that, the randomized questions also make them become familiar with the comments they need to give according to the topic they are reviewing. Furthermore, it was also assumed that they could do peer review better if they were distinguished between two things they had to review, namely whether it was composition skills or grammar skills. 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