Reflection Types and Students’ Viewing of Feedback in a First-Year Engineering Course Using Standards-Based Grading

Background: Feedback is one of the most powerful and essential tools for learning and assessment, particularly when it provides the information necessary to close an existing gap between actual and reference levels of performance. The literature on feedback has primarily focused on addressing strategies for providing effective feedback rather than aspects of students’ readiness to engage with feedback. Purpose/Hypothesis: This study investigated whether reflection, as a routine pedagogical intervention grounded in self-regulated learning theory, promotes the frequency with which students view feedback. Design/Method: A quasi-experimental design was employed to examine the relationship between the use of four different reflection types, as well as no reflection, and students’ feedback viewing behaviors in a first-year engineering course that used standards-based grading. Clickstream data were gathered through the learning management system to count the number of times students viewed feedback. The number of feedback views was compared by reflection type using descriptive statistics and a generalized linear model; weekly feedback viewing patterns were examined using time-descriptive graphs and the time-series cluster analysis. Results: Findings suggest reflection has the potential to increase the frequency of feedback views. Reflection not only had a positive and significant effect on the number of times students viewed feedback but also resulted in less variability between course sections and instructors when structured reflections made explicit references to feedback. Conclusions: Students need feedback to learn effectively, but many do not view feedback without formal prompting. The authors recommend instructors consistently administer reflections that include explicit pointers to feedback throughout the semester

Characteristics of Feedback that Influence Student Confidence and Performance during Mathematical Modeling

This study focuses on characteristics of written feedback that influence students’ performance and confidence in addressing the mathematical complexity embedded in a Model-Eliciting Activity (MEA). MEAs are authentic mathematical modeling problems that facilitate students’ iterative development of solutions in a realistic context. We analyzed 132 first-year engineering students’ confidence levels and mathematical model scores on aMEA(pre and post feedback), along with teaching assistant feedback given to the students. The findings show several examples of affective and cognitive feedback that students reported that they used to revise their models. Students’ performance and confidence in developing mathematical models can be increased when they are in an environment where they iteratively develop models based on effective feedback

Undergraduate and Graduate Teaching Assistants\u27 Perceptions of Their Responsibilities - Factors that Help or Hinder

Effective teaching assistants (TAs) are crucial for effective student learning. This is especially true in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs, where TAs are enabling large programs to transition to more student-centered learning environments. To ensure that TAs are able to support these types of learning environments, their perspectives of training, their abilities, and other work related aspects must be understood. In this paper a survey that was created based on interviews conducted with eight TAs is discussed. The survey has four primary categories of content that are critical for understanding TAs\u27 perspectives: (1) background, (2) motivation, (3) training, and (4) grading and feedback. This research team is first utilizing this survey at Purdue University to test for validity and reliability of the instrument, as well as identifying ways to improve the experiences and effectiveness of the First-Year Engineering Program\u27s TAs\u27 support system, training, hiring process, and any other relevant components of the infrastructure. The more generalizable goal of this research is to further develop this survey to be used by any STEM program as a diagnostic tool for identifying opportunities to enhance the TA support systems and therefore improve student learning

Teacher as Designer: A Framework for Teacher Analysis of Mathematical Model-Eliciting Activities

The study investigated tool development by three middle school mathematics teachers. The tools they designed were intended to support the use of model-eliciting activities (a form of instruction related to problem-based learning) and particularly the students’ presentations of their solutions for the whole class. The study examined the design and purposes for the presentation tools and resulted in a framework for categorizing teachers’ purposes for tools.The framework addressed the unit of analysis for the tools (individual students or groups of students) and the nature of teachers’ purposes for the tools. Design research was used as a theoretical perspective for conducting the investigation

Teacher Level Factors and Student Achievement in a Cyber-Enabled Engineering Education Professional Development Program

This study investigates the impact of an elementary engineering education teacher professional development program on student learning. The results show a significant increase in students’ knowledge in science from pre- to post-test as well as in engineering design from grade two to grade four. Further, the study uses multilevel modeling to quantitatively analyze the impact of differences among teachers on the engineering design achievement of their students. Different predictive relationships between demographic and social capital factors at the teacher level and student achievement are identified and implications for educational policymaking and practices are discussed

The Development of a Systematic Coding System for Elementary Students’ Drawings of Engineers

The Draw an Engineer Test (DAET) is a common measure of students’ perceptions of engineers. The coding systems currently used for K-12 research are general rubrics or checklists to capture the images presented in the drawing, which leave out some of the richness of students’ perceptions, currently only captured with an accompanying student interview. The purpose of this study is to build a reliable coding system, which first establishes an inventory of pictorial elements irrespective of their potential relationship with engineering and second captures aspects of students’ engineering perceptions inductively (from the ground up) while at the same time incorporating categories from previous research. The coding system will be used to help researchers understand how young students’ perceptions of engineering, engineers, and the work of engineers evolve and are impacted by interventions. The longterm goal of this project is to create a standalone measure that can be broadly applied to diverse populations, and to create a large multi-institution student database, with both K-12 and university populations represented. This database would provide a rich dataset for better understanding common misconceptions about engineering and thus enabling the development of methods to address them

Problem Formulation within open-ended problems: looking through the structure, behavior, function (SBF) and novice-expert (NE) frameworks

Problem formulation is integral to successful problem solving. To introduce problem formulation in first-year engineering classrooms, we utilize model-eliciting-activities (MEAs) – a client-driven engineering problems which guide students individually through problem formulation by asking three questions: Q1) “Who is the client?”, Q2) “In one or two sentences, what does the client need?, and Q3) “Describe at least two issues that need to be considered when developing a solution for the client.” The structure-behavior-function and novice-expert frameworks were used to analyse student responses before and after formal instruction on problem formulation was introduced. Student responses showed improvement with formal instruction

Best practices for using standards-based grading in engineering courses

Assessment of student achievement using a grading system is a major task required of engineering educators. The traditional approach is to use a summative score-based grading system that reports an end-of-semester letter grade based on student assignment scores throughout the course. Such an approach inherently fails to meet the conditions of sound assessment of student learning because the resulting final course grades only display how well students performed at completing separate assignments rather than how well they learned specific course objectives. Standards-based grading (SBG) is an alternative approach that directly measures the quality of students\u27 proficiency toward course learning objectives. The following paper assessed the use of standards-based grading by ten instructors at six institutions to identify instructor perceived benefits for students, obstacles to implementation, and best practices for integration