Liu, C. C., Lu, K. H., Wu, L. Y., & Tsai, C. C. (2016). The Impact of Peer Review on Creative Self-efficacy and Learning

Performance in Web 2.0 Learning Activities. Educational Technology & Society, 19 (2), 286–297.

286 ISSN 1436-4522 (online) and 1176-3647 (print). This article of the Journal of Educational Technology & Society is available under Creative Commons CC-BY-ND-NC

3.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). For further queries, please contact Journal Editors at ets-editors@ifets.info.

The Impact of Peer Review on Creative Self-efficacy and Learning Performance in Web 2.0 Learning Activities

Chen-Chung Liu1*, Kuan-Hsien Lu1, Leon Yufeng Wu2 and Chin-Chung Tsai3 1Graduate Institute of Network Learning Technology, National Central University, Taiwan // 2Science Education

Center, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan // 3Graduate Institute of Digital Learning and Education,

National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan // ccliu@cl.ncu.edu.tw // maxlimitc@gmail.com //

leonwu@ntnu.edu.tw // cctsai@mail.ntust.edu.tw *Corresponding author

(Submitted February 23, 2015; Revised June 28, 2015; Accepted September 15, 2015)

ABSTRACT Many studies have pointed out the significant contrast between the creative nature of Web 2.0 learning activities

and the structured learning in school. This study proposes an approach to leveraging Web 2.0 learning activities

and classroom teaching to help students develop both specific knowledge and creativity based on

Csikzentmihalyi’s system model of creativity. The approach considers peer review as the core component in the

Web 2.0 learning activities with the aim of engaging students in the creative learning paradigm. To gain a better

understanding of the impact of such an approach on students’ confidence and performance, this study gathered

and analyzed the works developed by 53 sixth graders in a Web 2.0 storytelling activity, as well as details of

their creative self-efficacy. The results show that those students who experienced the peer review using a set of

storytelling rubrics produced significantly more sophisticated stories than those who did not. Furthermore, the

peer review did not exert a significant negative influence on the students’ creative self-efficacy. It was also

found that the experimental group’s (students experiencing the peer review) creative self-efficacy consistently

reflected their performance, while the control group’s creative self-efficacy did not. Such results support that the

peer review process may help students to build a sophisticated level of reflection upon their creative work in

Web 2.0 learning activities.

Keywords Web 2.0 learning activity, Creative self-efficacy, System model of creativity, Field, Storytelling

Introduction

Creativity is considered as one of the core competences in contemporary education (U.S. Department of Education,

2010). Learning to be creative is thus infused into formal educational contexts to foster the creativity of students to

address this requirement. It is considered important to develop effective practices and pedagogies for encouraging

and enhancing students’ creativity in schools (Lassig, 2009). Recently, more and more Web 2.0 technologies,

referred to as Internet-based applications, have been developed to empower users to interact and collaborate with

each other as creators of user-generated content in an online community (O’Reilly, 2005). Web 2.0 technologies,

such as blogs, wikis and social networking platforms, have been increasingly applied to promote open and creative

learning experiences in various educational settings. For instance, the studies by Aragon, Poon, Monroy-Hernández

and Aragon (2009) and Liu, Liu, Chen, Lin and Chen (2011b) have demonstrated the effects of such Web 2.0

platforms on augmenting creative activities, as they can afford a platform for students to create and share their

creative works. Therefore, it is believed that the Web 2.0 technologies can enhance learner participation and

creativity in educational settings (Greenhow, Robelia. & Hughes, 2009; McLoughlin & Lee, 2010; Ravenscroft,

2009).

However, many studies have pointed out the significant contrast between the creative nature of Web 2.0 learning

activities and the structured learning that takes place in schools (Bennett, Bishop, Dalgarno, Waycott, & Kennedy,

2012; Mao, 2014). Formal education is restricted by the pre-defined curriculum in which students have to attain

certain knowledge (Jimoyiannis, Tsiotakis, Roussinos, & Siorenta, 2013). However, the acquisition of the knowledge

and assessment required in formal education may restrict the creative process. On the one hand, although the open

and creative features of Web 2.0 learning activities may support active learning, previous studies have found that

students’ work in such activities may be perfunctory and may lack critical construction of knowledge (Tess, 2013).

On the other hand, the assessment of students’ performance, which is often conducted within a certain framework,

may also be inconsistent with and interfere with the open and creative features of Web 2.0 learning activities

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(Hemmi, Bayne, & Land, 2009). Such assessment may also impact significantly students’ motivation to participate in

Web 2.0 learning activities.

It is widely believed that a critical pathway for developing students’ creativity is to model creative practices for

students (Sternberg & Williams, 1996). This study thus attempted to propose an approach to leveraging Web 2.0

learning activities and classroom teaching to help students develop both specific knowledge and creativity. This

approach is mainly based on Csikzentmihalyi’s system model of creativity (1999) which asserts that “creativity is a

process that can be observed only at the intersection where individuals, domains, and field interact”

(Csikzentmihalyi, 1999, p. 314). From Csikzentmihalyi’s perspective, individuals create new elements while

knowing and operating old elements in a domain. However, not all elements are accepted as new elements; rather,

new elements are “sanctioned by some group entitled to make decisions as to what should or should not be included

in the domain” (Csikzentmihalyi, 1999, p. 315). On the one hand, these groups, i.e. the field, determine the value and

originality of the new elements. On the other hand, individuals receive critical feedback to improve the elements they

have created.

From the perspective of Csikzentmihalyi’s system model, the review process is a central component of the creative

practice that students need to experience in order to understand the creative process. This study thus proposes

integrating peer review activities with Web 2.0 learning activities to engage students in the creative learning

paradigm and help them enhance their creative performance. In such peer review activities, students have the

opportunity to reflect upon the creative learning process and to develop creative products through social interaction

with others. Some empirical studies in the literature have pointed out the positive impact of peer review on creativity.

For instance, Falchikov (1988) found that peer feedback helped promote student confidence and creativity in a

project-based learning activity. Previous studies (Sluijsmans, Brand-Gruwel, & Merriënboer, 2002; Tsai & Liang,

2009) also found that students demonstrated an increasing level of creativity in their coursework through peer

review.

Although the above studies showed positive impacts of peer review on student creativity, some other research has

reported negative effects of Web 2.0 activities on the creative process. For instance, Windham (2007) found that

creators may feel constrained about posting work online, and may think twice about the work itself and others’

perceptions of it because others can read it. Hurlburt’s study (2008) echoed this effect of Web 2.0 learning activities,

indicating that the sharing of works is much more stressful than simple browsing and reading. This phenomenon is in

part due to the fact that there is a profound link between peer commenting and psychological safety (Van Gennip,

Segers, & Tillema, 2009), and the expectation of being assessed by others may influence one’s creativity (Smith,

Michael, & Hocevar, 1990). There is thus an imperative need to understand how Web 2.0 learning activities and

existing educational practices may be reshaped to fit each other in a way that can engage students in the Web 2.0

creative learning paradigm and assist them in critically constructing understanding of a discipline (Hemmi et al.,

2009; Laru, Näykki, & Järvelä, 2012).

To gain a better understanding of peer review in the Web 2.0 context, this study attempted to investigate students’

creative performance and their confidence in a Web 2.0 learning activity. In recent years, researchers have begun to

investigate the role of self-efficacy in engagement in the creative process. Creative self-efficacy, which shows

individuals’ confidence in creating novel works, is particularly noted as addressing how it may influence individual

and group creativity. It has been shown by several studies that creative self-efficacy significantly affects creative

performance (Tierney & Farmer, 2002; Choi, 2004). However, creative self-efficacy has as yet received limited

attention in the literature (Lassig, 2009). In particular, how peer review in the Web 2.0 learning activities may

influence students’ creative self-efficacy in educational contexts remains unclear. The current study thus conducted

an experiment to investigate the effects of peer review on creative self-efficacy and creative performance. By

gathering the creative works developed by 53 elementary school students in a Web 2.0 storytelling learning activity,

as well as an indication of their creative self-efficacy, this study aimed to investigate the following research

questions:

What are the impacts of peer review on students’ creative performance in the Web 2.0 learning activity?

Does peer review impact students’ creative self-efficacy in the Web 2.0 learning activity?

How is creative self-efficacy related to creative performance in the Web 2.0 learning activity?

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Method

Participants

The participants of this study were Taiwanese elementary school students. Students at this level were chosen because

creativity education is now receiving increasing attention in elementary schools. There is thus a need to examine how

different pedagogies influence creative learning tasks. To evaluate how peer review influences students’ creative

self-efficacy and performance in a Web 2.0 learning activity, two classes consisting of a total of 53 sixth graders

from an elementary school in northern Taiwan were randomly selected. The participants did not receive specific

training in storytelling skills as storytelling is not included in the elementary school curriculum in Taiwan.

Furthermore, although creativity has been advocated by many educators, the school curriculum in Taiwan does not

implement any formal course aiming to enhance students’ creativity directly. For example, the Chinese Literacy

courses in Taiwan have been implemented to develop students’ Chinese literacy in vocabulary and reading without

particular emphasis on storytelling. Therefore, this study investigated how the Web 2.0 platform could be

implemented to facilitate elementary creativity education. Analyzing students’ activities on the Web 2.0 platform is

helpful for understanding the effect of different Web 2.0 learning activities on elementary creativity education.

Procedure and the Web 2.0 storytelling activity

This study took a quasi-experimental approach to exploring the students’ creative performance and self-efficacy in a

Web 2.0 storytelling activity. One class was assigned as the control group (n = 26; 13 males and 13 females) while

the other was the experimental group (n = 27; 14 males and 13 females). Both groups used a Web 2.0 storytelling

platform on iPads (described later) to create and share stories. They could also view the stories created by others on

the platform. In addition, the experimental group students were provided with a set of rubrics (described later) to

review the stories developed by others. Because the storytelling activity of this study involves narratives and

drawings, the students’ scores of Chinese Literacy (i.e., abilities of Chinese literacy comprehension and expression)

and Art from the previous semester were examined to confirm their basic skills related to the storytelling task. There

was no significant difference between the two groups in their Chinese literacy scores (t = .067, p = .947) or art scores

(t = 1.475, p = .146), indicating that the two groups did not differ in their basic storytelling skills in terms of the two

required abilities prior to the experiment. Therefore, comparing the students’ creative self-efficacy and the creative

performance of the two groups can help us to understand the influence of peer review in the Web 2.0 learning

activity.

The experiment lasted for eight consecutive weeks and involved one hour per week of class time. During the first

week, brief instructions on storytelling with the Web 2.0 storytelling platform were provided. The students were then

asked to create a story entitled “Adventure to Mars” as an exercise during the 1st and 2nd weeks. The students in the

experimental group were guided to evaluate other students’ creative performance during the exercise. They were

then told that their stories created in the following weeks would be reviewed by their peers. This arrangement was to

ensure that the experimental group fully understood how their stories were to be evaluated by their peers, and thus

we can analyze how the peer assessment influenced the students’ creative performance. After the exercise stage, the

students started a new story as their major project, “Saving the Forest,” from the 3rd to the 8th week. The actual

review was conducted during the 7th and 8th weeks when most of the students had completed their draft stories.

Rather than grading with a single score, the students were given a set of rubrics to review their peers’ stories.

However, they did not receive any further training.

In order to facilitate the peer review of the students’ creative performance, a set of creation rubrics associated with

storytelling was administered. Taking into consideration the time constraints and the children’s literacy capabilities,

the set of rubrics given to the students was only a concise form of the storytelling performance rubrics developed by

Liu, Chen, Shih, Huang and Liu (2011a) which were used by three raters (described later) in this study to evaluate

the students’ creative performance in the storytelling activity. The concise form of the rubrics mainly evaluated the

quality of the stories’ essential components such as the setting, events, actions and the ending, and further,

considered a smooth and quality transition connecting across each of the components. In addition, the creativity level

of these components was also evaluated. Lastly, the quality of technical performance such as drawings, voice

narrations and framing were also included in the condensed rubrics. Hence, these rubrics, which translated the

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original rubrics into five easy-to-understand items (see Table 1), were provided to the experimental group to help

them review their peers’ stories in terms of both their content and technical quality.

Table 1. Peer review rubrics

Item Rubric

1 The story has a vivid background, events, actions and ending.

2 The story proceeds smoothly in terms of its background, events, actions and ending.

3 The story is very creative in terms of its background, events, actions and ending.

4 The story is presented with very nice drawings, narrations, and sound.

5 The story is presented with very nice animation.

As a comparison, the control group did not experience this review process. However, they could freely view all the

stories created by others and discuss the stories they were interested in in a face-to-face manner. All students were

asked to complete a creative self-efficacy survey during the 9th week. The two groups’ feedback on the creative self-

efficacy survey was analyzed to reveal the influence of the peer review.

The iPad storytelling platform

To facilitate the students’ participation in Csikzentmihalyi’s creativity process, in this study a Web 2.0 storytelling

platform on iPads was developed (see Figure 1) to enable the students to create and tell a story. More specifically,

the platform allowed the students to draw and use a voice recorder to tell stories. Furthermore, in order to support the

review process in Csikzentmihalyi’s system model, the platform also supports Web 2.0 features. Notably, the Web

2.0 storytelling platform on iPads allowed the students to browse all the stories created by their peers using the

sharing section (see Figure 2), as well as on a web-based platform. In addition to being able to browse all of the

stories created by others, the students could also review the story created by a specific student. It was hoped that

these features could construct a social platform wherein the students could experience the creativity process.

Figure 1. The interface of the iPad storytelling platform

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Figure 2. The sharing section of the iPad storytelling platform

Analysis of student creative performance

To understand how the peer review influenced the students’ creative performance in the storytelling activity, all

stories created by the students were evaluated by three reviewers. To reflect the students’ creative performance, the

current study adopted the rubrics designed by Liu et al. (2011a) which provide a set of concrete guidelines to

evaluate digital storytelling products based on Via’s rubrics (2002) which are commonly used for evaluating movie

products. The rubrics examine the quality of stories with regard to nine dimensions: (1) transitions/edits, (2)

planning/storyboarding, (3) action/dialog, (4) accuracy of information, (5) originality/creativity, (6) sound usage, (7)

drawing, (8) camera picturing, and (9) framing. With 2-4 sub-items within each dimension, there are a total of 20

sub-items across the nine dimensions. An example sub-item within the dimension of transitions/edits is “This story

proceeds smoothly in terms of presenting its background, events, actions, and the ending.” Another example within

accuracy and dialog is “This story contains logical reasoning in its background, events, actions, and the ending.” The

rubrics evaluated both content (dimensions 1-5) and technical (dimensions 6-9) quality so that we could obtain a

better understanding of the stories developed by the students.

This study applied the consensual assessment technique (Amabile, 1982) to evaluate the students’ storytelling

performance in order to assure the reliability of the storytelling evaluation. Three raters including one researcher of

this study and two teachers in the elementary school used the aforementioned storytelling performance rubrics to

evaluate all 53 stories. Pearson correlation analysis confirmed that the three raters’ grading yielded a highly positive

correlation ranging from .80 to .93 (p < .01), indicating that the grading process was highly reliable. The grades from

these nine rubrics were averaged together to indicate an overall performance of the students’ creative storytelling

products. Additionally, the first five rubrics (i.e., transitions/edits, story planning/boarding, action/dialog, accuracy of

information, and originality/creativity) were added together as the content quality score, and the last four (i.e., sound,

drawing, camera, and framing) were added together as technical quality.

Furthermore, to understand the quality of the stories created by the two groups, we also examined how the students’

stories aligned with the important story elements (e.g., settings, events, actions and consequences) based on story

grammar identified in the study by Liu et al. (2011a). Two coders examined each page of all stories together, and

determined which of the four story elements each page should belong. However, a page might convey more than one

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element based on its content. When a combination of elements was seen and the coders were in agreement, the frame

was regarded as having multiple story elements. The numbers of settings, events, actions and consequences which

each story aligned with were obtained and analyzed to reveal the influence of peer review on story structures.

To identify how the peer review may have influenced the students’ creative performance, this study compared the

two groups’ creative performance and their story structures with independent t-tests. Moreover, researchers have

noticed the inadequacy of using only the result of statistical significance testing in statistical inference (Cohen,

1988). To address this issue, the Cohen’s effect size index d (1988) was also used to report the practical significance

(effect magnitudes) along with each t-test. This is because the index can reveal the extent of the practical significant

difference between groups for each variable in this study. According to Cohen’s rough characterization, d = 0.2 is

deemed as a small effect size, d = 0.5 as a medium effect size, and d = 0.8 as a large effect size. Both the statistical

significance obtained by the t-test and the practical significance were integrated to obtain more reliable results of

how the students reacted to the two Web 2.0 learning activities.

Analysis of creative self-efficacy survey

The literature on creative self-efficacy indicates that an individual’s creative self-efficacy may not only relate to

personal attributes such as one’s creative personality and the capability to generate creative ideas and products

(Bandura, 1997; Amabile, 1997), but is also affected by socio-personal interactions (Hung, Huang, & Lin, 2008). In

other words, creativity can either be encouraged or discouraged (Sternberg, 2012, p. 3), and is likely to be

generated/eliminated by a socio-cognitive relational-self (Andersen & Chen, 2002). Therefore, the socio-personal

interaction experience in managing significant feedback from their peers may influence the students’ confidence in

their ability to perform creative tasks. With the purpose of investigating peer feedback effects on students’ creative

self-efficacy, the current study adopted the survey developed in a series of studies by Hung et al. (2008) and Hung

(2003). This survey includes 10 items thoroughly examining creative self-efficacy in three dimensions: “self-efficacy

of the produced creative product,” “self-efficacy of creative thinking strategy,” and “self-efficacy of reactions to

potential feedback.” The reported reliability of each dimension of the original survey (Cronbach’s alpha) was

between .66 and .82. For the needs of the current study, a few items required modification to better align them with

the condition of the storytelling experimental settings. The purposes and sample questions of the modified

questionnaire are displayed in Table 2. The Cronbach’s alpha of the modified survey ranged from .64 ~ .80 among

the three dimensions for another 144 students who also used the Web 2.0 storytelling platform for telling stories,

indicating that the survey is adequately reliable.

Table 2. The purposes and sample questions of the creative self-efficacy survey

Dimensions Purpose Sample questions

Creative products

To understand students’

perceptions of the product

they created

I believe my own story is special when compared to others’.

I feel my story is ordinary and not different from others’.

(Reverse)

Creative thinking

strategy

To understand students’

perceptions of creative

thinking and strategies

When a topic is assigned, I believe I can think of new ideas to

create a good story.

I can ingeniously apply some ideas or use sources to make

creative outcomes.

Reactions to

potential

feedback

To understand students’

reactions to potential feedback

given by peers

I will give up my ideas if my classmates or teacher criticize my

story. (Reverse)

I feel fine if others do not appreciate my story.

To obtain how the peer review may have influenced the students’ creative self-efficacy, the two groups’ creative

self-efficacy was compared using independent t-tests and Cohen’s effect size. Moreover, to understand the interplay

between creative self-efficacy and creative performance, the correlations between creative self-efficacy and

storytelling performance for both the control and the experimental group were also analyzed. Such an analysis may

further display whether creative self-efficacy might reflect their creative performance. It was hoped that the above

analyses would reveal how peer review in the Web 2.0 learning activity can influence creative performance and

creative self-efficacy.

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Results

The influence of peer review on creative performance

Table 3 displays the comparison between the creative performances demonstrated by the students who reviewed

others’ stories and those who did not. The results showed that the stories created by the two groups were significantly

different in quality. The stories created by the experimental group received significantly higher scores than the

control group for several rubrics. More specifically, their stories demonstrated a higher level of quality in their

transitions/edits, story planning/boarding and accuracy of information. For the rubrics of originality/creativity and

action/dialog, the experimental group also received marginally significantly higher scores than the control group.

Because these rubrics were related to the content quality of the stories, these results indicate that those students who

reviewed others’ work in the Web 2.0 learning activity were more likely to create quality content (t = 2.87, p < .01).

The Cohen’s d value for the overall content quality was .79 which almost reached a large effect size. However, the

review process did not show a significant effect on technical quality. The Cohen’s d value for the overall technical

quality was .3, representing only a small effect size. Among the four techinical rubrics, the experimental group

students only received significantly higher scores than the control group in the drawing rubrics (t = 2.32, p < .05

Cohen’s d = .63). This may be because, with a clear storyline in mind, the experimental group could develop clearer

drawings.

Table 3. The comparison of the Web 2.0 storytelling performance of the two groups

Rubric Group N Mean SD t Cohen’d

Content quality Experimental 27 3.06 0.86 2.87** 0.79

Control 26 2.40 0.80

Transitions and edits Experimental 27 3.40 0.76 3.61** 1.0

Control 26 2.64 0.76

Story planning and

boarding

Experimental 27 3.13 0.83 3.26** 0.90

Control 26 2.40 0.79

Action and dialog Experimental 27 2.61 1.08 1.76 0.48

Control 26 2.15 0.82

Accuracy of

information

Experimental 27 3.22 0.95 3.04** 0.84

Control 26 2.42 0.95

Originality and

creativity

Experimental 27 2.86 0.97 1.83 0.50

Control 26 2.40 0.88

Technical quality Experimental 27 2.58 0.80 1.00 0.27

Control 26 2.37 0.73

Sound Experimental 27 2.98 1.21 0.86 0.24

Control 26 2.72 0.89

Drawing Experimental 27 3.22 0.68 2.32* 0.63

Control 26 2.74 0.83

Camera Experimental 27 2.09 1.04 -0.22 0.06

Control 26 2.15 0.95

Framing Experimental 27 2.02 1.06 0.64 0.17

Control 26 1.85 0.88

Note. *p <.05. **p < .01.

The structure of the stories created by the two groups was analyzed, as displayed in Table 4. The results show that

the experimental group students created more versatile types of story elements than the control group did. They

created an average of 6.26 story elements which nearly significantly exceeded the number of 5.23 for the control

group (t = 1.92, p = .06). The Cohen’s d was .53, representing a middle effect size. The analysis of the students’

stories also found that the stories created by the two groups showed some differences in their structure. While the

control group created a relatively larger number of setting story elements, the experimental group created a larger

number of event, action and consequence story elements. The Cohen’s d for the Event was .47, which almost reached

a middle effect size. Therefore, the above results support the argument that providing concrete rubrics for evaluating

stories is helpful in terms of improving students’ content generation performance in Web 2.0 learning activities.

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Table 4. The structure of the stories created by the two groups

Story element Group N Mean SD t Cohan d

Setting Experimental 27 1.41 0.89 -1.13 0.3

Control 26 1.73 1.19

Event Experimental 27 1.52 1.05 1.72 0.47

Control 26 1.08 0.80

Action Experimental 27 2.22 1.50 1.59 0.43

Control 26 1.54 1.63

Consequence Experimental 27 1.11 0.64 1.28 0.36

Control 26 0.88 0.65

Total Experimental 27 6.26 1.63 1.92 0.53

Control 26 5.23 2.23

The influence of peer review on creative self-efficacy

Although the provision of the review rubrics enhanced the students’ storytelling performance, it might have had a

detrimental effect on their creative self-efficacy, as they realized that their stories would be reviewed by others. Table

5 displays the creative self-efficacy and the differences between the two groups. The results revealed that the two

groups did not show significant difference in the three dimensions of creative self-efficacy. The Cohen’s d for the

three dimensions ranged from .31 to .42, representing only a small effect size. The results reflect that both groups

had perceived positive confidence in the storytelling experience in the three dimensions of creative self-efficacy. In

particular, the two groups showed high confidence in the dimension of reactions to potential feedback (3.88 for the

experimental group and 3.65 for the control group). In other words, even when they understood that their work

would be evaluated by others, the students still perceived a high level of creative self-efficacy.

Table 5. A comparison of the two groups’ creative self-efficacy associated with the Web 2.0 storytelling activity

Dimension Group n Mean SD t Cohen’s d

Creative product Experiment 27 3.32 .67 1.56 0.42

Control 26 3.04 .65

Creative thinking strategy Experiment 27 3.56 .68 -1.47 0.41

Control 26 3.27 .74

Reactions to potential

feedback

Experiment 27 3.88 .85 -1.12 0.31

Control 26 3.65 .6

The relation between creative self-efficacy and creative performance

To understand the interplay between creative self-efficacy and storytelling performance in the Web 2.0 learning

activity, this study further analyzed the relationship between creative self-efficacy and creative performance

associated with storytelling for the control and the experimental group. The results in Table 6 reveal that creative

self-efficacy was positively correlated with storytelling performance in the experimental group. Examining the nine

dimensions of the story quality, it was found that the experimental group’s creative self-efficacy is positively

correlated with the storytelling performance in the dimension of originality/creativity (r = .40, p < .05) and drawing

(r = .47, p < .05). By contrast, there were no significant relationships between the creative self-efficacy and

storytelling performance in the control group. In other words, after experiencing the peer feedback activity, the

students’ creative self-efficacy can more consistently reflect their actual creative performance than those students

who did not experience the peer feedback activity. Such a result may reflect that students’ creative self-efficacy may

be more related to their creative performance in the dimensions such as originality and creativity, revealing that the

peer feedback with the rubrics may influence the students’ evaluation of creativity in a way that aligns with the

teachers’ assessment, considering that there is a positive relationship between the self-reported creative self-efficacy

and the creative performance evaluated by the teachers.

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Table 6. The relation between creative self-efficacy and creative performance of the experimental and the control

group

Control group (N = 26) Experimental group (N = 27)

r r

Content quality -.07 .31

Transitions and edit -.15 .32

Planning and storyboarding -.11 .30

Action and dialog -.02 .17

Accuracy of information -.08 .32

Originality and creativity .07 .40*

Technical quality .-.01 .29

Sound -.01 .29

Drawing -.15 .47*

Camera .04 .12

Framing .08 .14

Note. *p < .05.

Conclusions and implications

Many educators have emphasized the importance of integrating Web 2.0 technologies into classroom settings. Peer

review may improve students’ understanding of a domain, but may also interfere with students’ creativity in Web 2.0

learning contexts. The results of this study found that peer review with an explicit set of storytelling rubrics enhanced

the students’ storytelling domain knowledge as well as their storytelling performance. Moreover, it did not exert a

significant negative influence on the students’ creative self-efficacy. Educators may find peer feedback helpful in

terms of enhancing students’ creative processes in other Web 2.0 learning activities.

The results of this study may shed light on the consideration of incorporating Web 2.0 learning activities into

classroom practice, particularly, how Csikzentmihalyi’s (1999) system model of creativity may be aligned with

teaching practice in the classroom. One of the criticisms of the implementation of Web 2.0 learning activities in the

classroom is the mismatch between the creative nature of Web 2.0 platforms and the highly structured nature of

classroom teaching practice (Bennett et al., 2012; Mao, 2014). Students’ works on the Web 2.0 platform tend to be

casual and lack critical knowledge construction (Tess, 2013). The implementation of Web 2.0 learning activities that

fail to address this mismatch will not engage students in learning. A previous study by Liu et al. (2011a) also

investigated students’ storytelling performance on a Web 2.0 platform, indicating that children tend to create only

simple stories without developing sophisticated transitions. A follow-up study by Liu, Wu, Chen, Tsai and Lin (2014)

indicated that providing hints to students improved their creative performance, but reduced their creative self-

efficacy for participating in creative activities.

The current study applied Csikzentmihalyi’s (1999) system model of creativity as the theoretical framework to

implement the Web 2.0 learning activities. The students were guided to play the role of reviewers to judge the

creativity of their peers. It was found that this implementation influenced not only the content quality but also the

students’ ability to structure stories in the Web 2.0 learning activity without hindering their creative self-efficacy.

This result reveals that Csikzentmihalyi’s (1999) system model with clear quality rubrics to guide the peer review

enhanced the students’ knowledge of storytelling, and such knowledge was further applied to develop their stories,

such that the students in the experimental group exhibited better storytelling performance. These findings support the

argument that the theoretical framework of Csikzentmihalyi’s (1999) system model of creativity is helpful for

addressing the mismatch between teaching practice in classrooms and Web 2.0 creativity features, and for engaging

students in learning.

This study also found that the implementation of Csikzentmihalyi’s (1999) system model of creativity in the

classroom did not exert a significant negative influence on the students’ creative self-efficacy. It was found that the

students who experienced peer review showed a similar level of creative self-efficacy to those who did not. These

results contradict the findings of the studies by Windham (2007) and Hurlburt (2008) which indicated that social

evaluation may cause anxiety that might restrict the creativity feature of Web 2.0 technologies. However, the findings

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of this study should not be over-generalized to other Web 2.0 learning contexts as they were based on elementary

school students’ feedback, while most of the studies regarding Web 2.0 learning activities such as those of Windham

(2007) and Hurlburt (2008) concern higher education students’ experiences of using Web 2.0 platforms. Furthermore,

it should be noted that the peer feedback rubric applied in this study was principle-based rather than rule-based, as it

involved only general criteria such as creativeness and the smooth transition of the stories, and did not impose tight

technical requirements such as the number of pages or the form of the stories. The study by Liu et al. (2014)

indicated that providing detailed rules or hints during creativity processes may reduce students’ creative self-efficacy.

Educators may need to take the form of review rubrics into account when implementing peer review in Web 2.0

learning activities. Future research is also required to examine how different forms of rubrics may impact creative

self-efficacy and performance in Web 2.0 learning contexts.

In this study it was found that creative self-efficacy is correlated with story quality in the originality and creativity

dimension. However, such a relationship was only found in the experimental group, not in the control group. These

results partially align with the results of the study by Tierney and Farmer (2002), which indicated that students’

creative self-efficacy is significantly correlated with their creative performance. However, the control group students’

creative self-efficacy did not consistently reflect their creative performance. This may be partially due to the fact that

the students in the control group did not gain sufficient evaluation skills associated with the storytelling task. By

contrast, the experimental group’s creative self-efficacy consistently reflected their creative performance after they

participated in the peer review activity. This finding may suggest that only when students have experience of

engaging in social evaluation activities will their creative self-efficacy in the creative work be consistent with their

creative performance. Educators may need to provide social evaluation opportunities for students during their initial

encounters with creative work in the Web 2.0 learning context to build sufficient evaluation skills of creative work.

For instance, teachers may organize an in-class discussion activity in which students may present their works and

practice commenting on others’ work, or a structured peer review activity may be helpful to achieve this goal.

This study aimed to explore how peer review may affect creative performance and self-efficacy in a Web 2.0

learning context. It was found that the proposed peer feedback may enhance the storytelling performance without

hindering the creative self-efficacy associated with storytelling. However, the study was conducted in a real

classroom where the students knew each other. It is not clear how peer review might influence the creative

performance and self-efficacy in purely online contexts where participants do not know each other. Furthermore, it

should be noted that this study was only a small-scale investigation and mainly focused on storytelling tasks. The

subjects of this study were students in an elementary school in Taiwan. Cultural differences may have a potential

impact on students’ creative performance and self-efficacy. It would be interesting to see how Web 2.0 learning

activities could influence the creative process of students of different ages and countries. Nevertheless, the peer

review mechanism is common in many online Web 2.0 learning activities. Thus, having acknowledged the

limitations of the sample size and the creative task, this study can still provide potential approaches to using Web 2.0

technologies to enhance learning activities in the settings of other domains.

Acknowledgements

This research was partially funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, R.O.C. under 103-2511-S-008 -014 -

MY3 and 101-2511-S-008 -005 -MY3.

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