Students generally think they have too little feedback. This article reports on a research done to evaluate how students experience the quality of feedback on a digital platform and with use of rubrics; compared to written feedback or no feedback at all. The course used for this research is a forth semester course on Thermodynamics at Mechanical Engineering at Aarhus University School of Engineering. It is a mandatory course for mechanical engineering students. As a part of the course the students shall complete four cases. The cases are graded by the teacher, and count for 20 % of the course grade. The cases are an important part of the learning process in the course; it is where the students have to do calculations on realistic problems and here they are forced to read the learning material more in depth. In the evaluation of the course almost all students state that this is where they learn mostly - and also state this is hard work. Due to the importance of these cases, I have made a lot of effort to give the students proper feedback. The learning platform used in the course is Black Board, and the students receive feedback on this digital learning platform. As a part of this feedback process, rubrics have been used to clarify criteria for the cases. The students are supposed to use these rubrics, both when they solve cases and when they receive feedback on them. Different varieties of rubrics are used and what type students prefer is also researched. Not surprisingly, students in this research prefer the type of rubrics that gives them most feedback and they prefer even more feedback that seems personal. Giving students’ feedback by indicating the quality of their solution on a detailed scale is not values as much as individual feedback that is shorter. The research is done in a real setting - a real course with real students. In order to evaluate the effect of the feedback given and the use of rubrics, I decided to use a mix-method approach: A questionnaire send out to all students in the class and in-depth interviews with some of the students. The research made clear that students favor detailed criteria. It is also clear from the research that the rubric they liked the best were the one where they had a more detailed description of each of the criteria. However, a university degree also should make the students more independent so they independently can solve a typical engineering problem. Giving the students a detailed rubric could be seen as a way to reduce the independence. Consequently, it is important to adjust the level of detail to their expected level of proficiency in the case they solve. As concluded by many others: Feedback is found useful and appreciated by the students. In this course the students found the amount of feedback to be higher than they normally experience in their study. However, personal feedback was preferred even more. When the students are asked about their view on the feedback given, by indicating the quality of their solution on a detailed scale, they prefer the individually written one and this are what they get on the digital platform.
Proceedings of the 13th International CDIO Conference in Calgary, Canada, June 18-22 2017