The full circle: enhancing feedback to students

At Loughborough University, the School of Civil and Building Engineering commissioned the Centre for Engineering and Design Education to undertake a longitudinal study, over four years, to explore issues associated with feedback on assignments from both the staff and student perspective. This study was prompted by low feedback scores on the National Student Survey* and initially explored the sources of students’ dissatisfaction with feedback and their perceptions of what constitutes feedback. In later years the study was broadened to explore how students use their feedback and the impediments to this. The findings of the study have influenced the feedback strategy and practice within the School with clear guidance given to staff, training provided to students and the introduction of enhanced feedback quality monitoring processes. This paper reports on the fourth year of the study, which goes full circle back to students’ perception of effective feedback. The fourth year of the study seeks to explore, from the student perspective, whether the changes made have addressed the original issues raised by the students, whether they are satisfied with the quality of the feedback they now get and whether their expectations regarding feedback have changed. The study uses a combination of focus group discussions, and questionnaires to gather data from second and third year students who have been impacted most by the feedback changes made within the School. This paper shares key findings from the study, including the impact that the practice changes have had on the general students’ understanding of feedback and the changes in level of expectation of feedback, particularly with respect to the most engaged students

Developing the critical thinking skills of students in Civil and Building Engineering at Loughborough University.

This research investigated the critical thinking skills of undergraduate students in Civil and Building Engineering (CBE) at Loughborough University. In particular it focused on individual students’ perceptions of what critical thinking entailed, the views of staff regarding the students’ ability in this area, especially relating to final year research projects, and modules where critical thinking skills were addressed and assessed. The attitude to critical thinking by students from different cultures and countries was also examined. There are seven different programmes within CBE and differences in student ability and module content were compared and contrasted between programmes, with particular focus on modules studied during the first two years at university. The focus on modules prior to the final year of study was a result of Programme Directors and Project Supervisors reporting that students are not adequately demonstrating critical thinking skills when undertaking research-based tasks in their final year of study. A questionnaire, which was designed to gain an insight into students’ understanding of critical thinking, was completed by 39 students from five different programmes of study. In addition to preliminary discussions with all Programme Directors in the School, ten academic members of staff were interviewed to determine their views on the level of critical thinking demonstrated by the students and their own level of focus on this skill in their teaching. The findings from the questionnaires and interviews were then related to the modules of study for these programmes and a map detailing gaps in exposing students to this skill were produced. The findings show that from the student perspective the majority of those surveyed do understand what critical thinking involves and believe this to be important to their future working lives. However, from the staff perspective it appears that, in the main, students do not demonstrate aspects of critical thinking unless explicitly asked to do so and students who do demonstrate critical thinking, for example, when undertaking research projects do not do it at the level that is expected. If students are to view critical thinking as an important part of their development then it is essential that these skills are assessed in more modules. This will ensure that students enter the workplace with the ability to analyse situations, challenge the views of others and make informed decisions

Quantifying the heterogeneity of soil compaction, physical soil properties and soil moisture across multiple spatial scales [Abstract]

Quantifying the heterogeneity of soil compaction, physical soil properties and soil moisture across multiple spatial scales [Abstract

Interpretation of water retention field measurements in relation to hysteresis phenomena

Knowledge of the soil water retention function is fundamental to quantifying the flow of water and dissolved contaminants in the vadose zone. This function is usually determined by fitting a particular model (see, for example, van Genuchten (1980) or Brooks-Corey (1964)) to observed retention points. Independent of the model chosen, interpretation and identification of the water retention parameters are subjective and prone to error, particularly as it is common that the hysteresis history in measured data points is unknown. Experimental data sets from three different field soils are used to clearly demonstrate how the lack of hysteresis knowledge can lead to an inconsistent and incorrect interpretation of the retention data, and therefore to the incorrect estimation of soil hydraulic parameters. By using a hysteresis model to interpret this same data set, it is easily shown that consistent and reliable estimates of soil retention parameters can be obtained. This is true for any physically based hysteresis model. The difficulty in reading water retention measurements may be evident when both drying and wetting data are measured. However, in practice, users are rarely aware of this problem since generally only one set of drying data is measured, making comparison impossible. Such erratic interpretation of water retention field data in the literature will be probably far more common than expected

Modeling overland flow and soil erosion on nonuniform hillslopes: a finite volume scheme.

This paper presents a finite volume scheme for coupling the St. Venant equations with the multi- particle size class Hairsine-Rose soil erosion model. A well-balanced MUSCL-Hancock scheme is proposed to minimize spurious waves in the solution arising from an imbalance between the flux gradient and the source terms in the momentum equation. Additional criteria for numerical stability when dealing with very shallow flows and wet-dry fronts are highlighted. Numerical tests show that the scheme performs well in terms of accuracy and robustness for both the water and sediment transport equations. The proposed scheme facilitates the application of the Hairsine-Rose model to complex scenarios of soil erosion with concurrent interacting erosion processes over a non-uniform topography

THE FULL CIRCLE: ENHANCING FEEDBACK TO STUDENTS

At Loughborough University, the School of Civil and Building Engineering commissioned the Centre for Engineering and Design Education to undertake a longitudinal study, over four years, to explore issues associated with feedback on assignments from both the staff and student perspective. This study was prompted by low feedback scores on the National Student Survey* and initially explored the sources of students’ dissatisfaction with feedback and their perceptions of what constitutes feedback. In later years the study was broadened to explore how students use their feedback and the impediments to this. The findings of the study have influenced the feedback strategy and practice within the School with clear guidance given to staff, training provided to students and the introduction of enhanced feedback quality monitoring processes. This paper reports on the fourth year of the study, which goes full circle back to students’ perception of effective feedback. The fourth year of the study seeks to explore, from the student perspective, whether the changes made have addressed the original issues raised by the students, whether they are satisfied with the quality of the feedback they now get and whether their expectations regarding feedback have changed. The study uses a combination of focus group discussions, and questionnaires to gather data from second and third year students who have been impacted most by the feedback changes made within the School. This paper shares key findings from the study, including the impact that the practice changes have had on the general students’ understanding of feedback and the changes in level of expectation of feedback, particularly with respect to the most engaged students

Optimising construction with self-compacting concrete

Self-compacting concrete or self-consolidating concrete (as it is known in North America) (SCC) is used on the basis of its unique properties of flowability, passability and resistance to segregation. It requires no external energy to achieve full compaction, so is advantageous on site, but there is evidence that its higher cost is a significant barrier to greater adoption. The research entailed work measurement of 14 UK single-family home residential projects (eliciting data on construction time and labour productivity) and cost modelling of three slab scenarios (exploring the relationship between material and labour costs). The study found SCC was placed up to 73% faster than conventional concrete and, when labour and material costs are included, the supplier is able to price SCC to closely match conventional concrete, hence making SCC more viable for the contractor. This relationship between as-built costs for SCC and conventional concrete is clarified by developing Pmax, providing a new mechanism for understanding project profitability and viability of SCC

Modeling the dynamics of soil erosion and size-selective sediment transport over nonuniform topography in flume-scale experiments

Soil erosion and the associated nutrient fluxes can lead to severe degradation of surface waters. Given that both sediment transport and nutrient sorption are size selective, it is important to predict the particle size distribution (PSD) as well as the total amount of sediment being eroded. In this paper, a finite volume implementation of the Hairsine-Rose soil erosion model is used to simulate flume-scale experiments with detailed observations of soil erosion and sediment transport dynamics. The numerical implementation allows us to account for the effects of soil surface microtopography (measured using close range photogrammetry) on soil erosion. An in-depth discussion of the model parameters and the constraints is presented. The model reproduces the dynamics of sediment concentration and PSD well, although some discrepancies can be observed. The calibrated parameters are also consistent with independent data in the literature and physical reason. Spatial variations in the suspended and deposited sediment and an analysis of model sensitivity highlight the value of collecting distributed data for a more robust validation of the model and to enhance parametric determinacy. The related issues of spatial resolution and scale in erosion prediction are briefly discussed

Editorial: toward 50 years of 'Water Resources Research'

The first issue of 'Water Resources Research' (WRR) was published in March 1965 and, therefore, the year 2015 will present the exciting opportunity to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the journal. Naturally, this milestone will be seen as an occasion to look back on 50 years of research activity. The history of WRR provides a very interesting perspective on the development of hydrology and the legacy of the worldwide water resources community

Transport time scales in soil erosion modelling

Unlike sediment transport in rivers, erosion of agricultural soil must overcome its cohesive strength to move soil particles into suspension. Soil particle size variability also leads to fall velocities covering many orders of magnitude, and hence to different suspended travel distances in overland flow. Consequently, there is a large range of inherent time scales involved in transport of eroded soil. For conditions where there is a constant rainfall rate and detachment is the dominant erosion mechanism, we use the Hairsine-Rose (HR) model to analyze these timescales, to determine their magnitude (bounds) and to provide simple approximations for them. We show that each particle size produces both fast and slow timescales. The fast timescale controls the rapid adjustment away from experimental initial conditions – this happens so quickly that it cannot be measured in practice. The slow time scales control the subsequent transition to steady state and are so large that true steady state is rarely achieved in laboratory experiments. Both the fastest and slowest time scales are governed by the largest particle size class. Physically, these correspond to the rate of vertical movement between suspension and the soil bed, and the time to achieve steady state, respectively. For typical distributions of size classes, we also find that there is often a single dominant time scale that governs the growth in the total mass of sediment in the non-cohesive deposited layer. This finding allows a considerable simplification of the HR model leading to analytical expressions for the evolution of suspended and deposited layer concentrations