Students and engineering educators' feedback on design

Abstract

In this paper, we compared first-year engineering students' and engineering educators' written feedback on a sample of student design work. A coding scheme with two domains, Substance and Focus of feedback, was developed to analyze and compare the feedback provided by the two groups. Overall, not only did educators provide more and longer comments, but their Focus of feedback had no overlap with the students. Students' feedback was focused on giving Negative/Positive Assessment on the design work and giving Direct Recommendations for how to improve the work. Educators focused on asking thought provoking questions, indirectly challenging students' design ideas, and providing details or examples so the feedback could be easily understood. Educators' comments were mostly related to design ideas specific to the design problem while students' comments were related to communication issues with the design work.