Investigations on the use of student peer review to improve supervision of capstone courses in the civil engineering education

Abstract

This paper investigates the use of peer-review as a supervising tool for students writing assignments for the capstone courses in their civil engineering education. The participants in the peer-reviews included a combination of bachelor and master students. The reason for trying peer-review as a supervising tool was to activate the students potential for learning through participating as both presenters and opponents in the peer-review process itself and to improve their work as an outcome. A potential for rationalisation of the supervisors workload, was considered a possible secondary gaining. Experiences show that students run into many of the same obstacles and ask corresponding questions regarding their thesis. Through the peer-review process, the supervisors were able to advise everyone simultaneously, and everybody could gain from participating the discussions. The students participating in the peer reviews were separated into two different groups based on the topic of their assignments. This ensured relevant discussions and avoided students spending an unnecessary amount of time. The peer reviews were divided by category based on the report template. The results indicate that execution of well-directed peer review processes amongst the students might offer advantages that are not available through a "teacher" or other superior alone. These extra advantages are explained through several learning mechanisms. The students were found to be openminded towards participating in this "new" process, and to having high expectations for the outcome. After repeatedly participating eight sessions, their overall perception of outcome even outperformed their expectations.