Colloquium Use of peer feedback to enhance elementary students’ writing through blogging Yu Liang Chen, Eric Zhi Feng Liu, Ru Chu Shih, Chin Tsung Wu and Shyan Ming Yuan Address for correspondence: Mr. Yu Liang Chen, Department of Computer Science, National Chiao Tung University, 1001 University Road, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan. Email: imklchen@gmail.com; Dr. Eric Zhi Feng Liu, Graduate Institute of Learning & Instruction, National Central University, no. 300 Jung-da Road, Chung-Li City, Taoyuan 320, Taiwan. Email: totem@cc.ncu.edu.tw Introduction The learning process can be transformed from in-class teaching into learning outside the class- room due to the emergence of new networking tools. In this study, peer feedback was used to enhance elementary students’ writing through employing a brand new networking environ- ment: the blog Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2005). Without teachers’ guidance on the out-of-class writing, students were brought to the blog environment in which they posted their articles, made correc- tions or gave suggestions and shared their work with others.Thus, students could have greater inspiration to write and gain more practice in writing. Richardson (2006) also pointed out some advantages of using blogs in education, such as how blogs can erase the limitation of classroom walls and offers students more possibilities to connect with others outside of the classroom. Teachers and students can manage and reflect upon their learning outcomes through the archived data on the blogs (Chuang, 2008; Liu & Chang, 2010). Blogs encourage students to be more actively engaged in knowledge creation, sharing their ideas and viewpoints in writing with others and publishing their works (Krishnamurthy, 2002; Rich- ardson, 2006). According to Flower and Hayes (1981), the act of writing involves three major elements.These include: the writer’s long-term memory, task environment and the actual writing process. These written documents on the blogs have a vast audience in the blogosphere because they can be easily shared with others on the Internet. Such learning experiences vastly differ from those in the past. From the literature review, many studies show the possible relationship between blogging and writing (Liu & Chang, 2010) and peer feedback and performance (Liu & Lin, 2007). However, there are insufficient studies investigating the effectiveness of using peer feedback to improve elementary students’ writing through blogging; this study aimed to remedy that issue. Method This research adopted a single-group with pre- and post-tests design to investigate the effectiveness of using peer feedback to enhance elementary students’ writing through blogging. The experiment was conducted for 2 hours per week over a period of 15 weeks. An online platform of blogging, named ‘uSchool’, was provided to the participants for posting their written works. A series of quantitative and qualitative techniques were employed to analyse the data, including interrater reliability, content analysis, t-test, analysis of covariance, observations and interviews. British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 42 No 1 2011 E1–E4 doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2010.01139.x © 2010 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2010 Becta. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.