15 students participating in the first year compulsory design-build course (12 ETCS) on a CDIO based Bachelor of Engineering education in Food science at The Technical University of Denmark (DTU) were evaluated using five reports as formative assessment and a final oral exam. The reports were created to aligning the student’s perception of their present status during the semester with the teachers understanding of what were taught and to give students time to reflect on different subjects in the course. Each report covered a specific assignment of what was presented during lectures and worked with during group work. The students worked in predesigned groups, not based on any prior knowledge or on their personal abilities since they were first year students. The compositions of the groups were changed half way through the semester. When looking at the achieved marks for the reports and the final oral group exam with individual marks for the students, two observations were made. First of all students did adapt to the change from being secondary school students to be university students by aligning with the expectations from the teachers to the content of the reports. One sign for this transformation could be the gradual increase in marks during the first part of the semester. Secondly, three types of students were identified. Observations were made during lectures and group work identifying the different student types. This was possible due to the low number of students. The Student type 1 seems to do what was needed for fulfilling the requirement of the reports to be handled in but not more. If the group in which they participated contained too many of such students the overall grade given for the assignment was lowered. Furthermore the average score of marks for the report equal the marks given for the final oral presentation reflecting that it was not the media of presentation but the student ability that was marked. Furthermore the final grade for these students was below the average grade for the course. The Student type 2 did contribute to the written assignments but did not have either a positive or a negative effect of the marks given for the written assignments. The final oral marks reflected the average score of the course. Student type 3 was the driver of the marks obtained for the reports. When presented the average score of the reports a tendency was observed that they were raised if not too many of the Students type 1 were presents. If more of the Students type 1 were present the marks were lowered while presence of student type 3 in higher numbers raised the marks. Marks given in the final oral examination for the Student type 3 was higher than the course averaged. These findings raise questions about how students with different prerequisites and on different levels cooperate in groups and what impact they have on each others’ learning performances and results and how these strategies can be used to optimize the learning outcome of Design-Build projects in a CDIO context.
Proceedings of the 10th International CDIO Conference, Barcelona, Spain, June 15-19 2014