Student Evaluation of Repeated AI Feedback Across a Semester of Writing
2026-07-17 • Computers and Society
Computers and SocietyHuman-Computer Interaction
AI summaryⓘ
The authors studied how 283 Estonian bachelor students used AI tools to get feedback on their reflective essays during one semester. They found that most students thought the AI feedback was helpful and useful, but some found it less helpful towards the end. The authors also looked at how deeply students reflected in their essays and tried to see which essays were likely written without AI help. Their findings show that AI can give quick, useful writing advice, but students still need to use it carefully to actually improve their thinking and learning.
Generative AIreflective essaysfeedback appraisalhigher educationAI text classifierstudent reflectionself-selected AI toolswriting feedbacklearning process
Authors
Andres Karjus, Janika Leoste, Tiia Õun
Abstract
Generative AI is increasingly used for feedback in higher education, but evidence from repeated classroom use remains limited. This short paper analyses 2988 reflective essay-feedback-appraisal instances from 283 Estonian bachelor students across one semester. Students obtained and assessed feedback from a self-selected AI tool using a uniform prompt. The present analysis of the anonymized text corpus covers essay content, AI feedback, and its perceived helpfulness. Students found feedback helpful and actionable more often than not; about a tenth thought AI unhelpful, more so towards the end of the semester. We also analyzed essay reflection depth, and used a validated AI text classifier to estimate the share of essays that could be treated as likely unaided student writing. The study contributes descriptive classroom evidence on integration of AI feedback - a fast and scalable way to provide immediate writing advice, but not a self-contained route to better reflection. Benefits depend on whether students learn to use AI selectively and critically, without sliding into over-use harmful for the learning process.