Understanding the role of web-based peer learning: how does it matter to academically transitioning students’ critical thinking skills?

Web-based peer learning (WPL) has been found to help bolster students’ academic success. However, little research has targeted WPL’s role for academically transitioning students who are in a new learning context and may not be ready for new academic demands. To fill this gap, this qualitative study explores the developmental process of students’ critical thinking skills when they engaged in out-of-class WPL. A qualitative analysis was conducted on multiple data sources produced by English-as-a-foreign-language readers at a Chinese university. The analysis shows that through its multidimensional affordances, WPL (i.e. peer discussions involving questions and answers on a web platform) enabled students to fill their knowledge gaps and improve their critical thinking skills, buttressing their academic transition. Students’ academic transition did reveal progress. Nonetheless, the transition was disrupted and generally embodied by students’ consistent integration of their newly developed knowledge and peers’ knowledge on the web platform. This allowed the practice and development of the critical thinking skills needed for academic transition. The study concluded that, through its multidimensional affordances, WPL played a useful role in supporting student readers’ out-of-class development of critical thinking skills, especially where students were experiencing academic transition.