Time Efficient Assessment and Feedback Methods for Large Computer-Aided-Design Cohorts (original) (raw)

Automated Grading of First Year Student CAD Work

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings

Introductory CAD courses typically have a large enrolment. This leads to a long time grading for the faculty, and slow feedback for the student. As a solution to his problem, a program has been created to automatically grade students' work that is submitted in a text file format. The program receives students' files by email, and returns grading feedback to the students through email as well. The effectiveness of the program is demonstrated using a survey of the students as well as improvement of the students test scores compared to the previous year when the program was not used. An additional benefit of using the program is the instructor's time grading is dramatically reduced.

The Role of Computer Based Homework for Engineering Design Courses

2007

Evaluation of students in engineering design courses remains a key challenge to educators. While the evaluation techniques presented by computer based homework may not seem applicable to design courses, a basic understanding of the ASCE Body of Knowledge, Bloom's Taxonomy, and the draft Body of Knowledge Outcome Rubric allows for the development of meaningful assignments. Along with a brief introduction to these topics, this paper discussed the relative applicability of different question types typically available for computer based homework, along with example questions from a highway design course. Though not all levels of achievement can be reasonably evaluated, computer based homework, when properly applied, can serve as a useful tool for helping to evaluate student achievement in engineering design courses.

The State of the Art in Providing Automated Feedback to Open-Ended Student Work

Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), 2021

This article provides a review of the state of the art of technologies in providing automated feedback toopen-ended student work on complex problems. It includes a description of the nature of complex problems and elements of effective feedback in the context of engineering education. Existing technologies based on traditional machine learning methods and deep learning methods are compared in light of the cognitive skills, transfer skills and student performance expected in a complex problemsolving setting. Areas of interest for future research are identified.

Teaching Computer Aided Design: An experiment in teaching and assessment practices

2018

During 2004 the Industrial Design degree at RMIT University initiated the Learner Centred Project (LCP) a teaching and learning project that aimed to enhance the culture of learning in the degree. As part of the changes to learning and teaching brought about by the project, questions were raised by teaching staff about the teaching and evaluating methodologies used in a course on Computer Aided Design (CAD). In particular staff had noticed that although some students were developing competency in CAD, they did not appear to be very enthusiastic about computers as a design tool nor about developing their own potential for using CAD in their design practice. To increase student motivation for learning in the course, learning and teaching solutions that were aligned to LCP were implemented by redesigning the curriculum and introducing learning contracts and peer assessment strategies. At the conclusion of the course, teaching staff reflected on their experience in implementing the changes and the effectiveness in engaging students. They fashioned a method now referred to as the FALCE (Facilitation, Alienation, Learning, Community, Excess) approach. This paper recounts the full story of developing this approach and draws some conclusions about ways for staff and students to engage as a learning community.

Contemporary and Technology Based Assessment and Feedback for Student Enhanced Learning: A Case Study of Mechanical Engineering Department at Middle East College

SHS Web of Conferences

Assessment is an important part to identify the strengths and weaknesses of student learning. Various approaches for module delivery have been implemented, emphasizing the value of student participation and their role in the educational process. This provides an excellent strategy to evaluate students over time and improve their performances. In this study, performance-based assessment as a modern form of assessment presented and discussed. Students' work was gathered in portfolios (Microsoft OneNote) so that their performance, effort, and progress could be monitored and tracked along with the task requirements. Module delivery strategy as a case study is also presented accompanied with the assessment and feedback methods. Additionally, the significance of incorporating students in the feedback process, increasing their capacity to appraise the quality of their own and their peers' work, and fostering their capacity to conduct self-evaluations and develop into independent le...

Towards an Interactive Assessment Framework for Engineering Design Learning

Volume 3: 19th International Conference on Design Theory and Methodology; 1st International Conference on Micro- and Nanosystems; and 9th International Conference on Advanced Vehicle Tire Technologies, Parts A and B, 2007

In this paper we explore the use of text processing technology for on-line assessment in an engineering design project class. We present results from a 5-week classroom study in a capstone engineering design course in which we explore the potential benefits of such technology for student learning in this context. Furthermore, we present results from ongoing work assessing student productivity based on features extracted from their conversational behavior in the course discussion board. While we found that typical shallow productivity measures such as number of posts, length of posts, or number of files committed have no correlation with an instructor assigned grade, we can achieve a substantial improvement using simple linguistic patterns extracted from on-line conversational behavior.

Systematic and Rigorous Use of Feedback to Enhance Learning in Engineering Classes

Journal of Engineering Education Transformations, 2021

Feedback is among the most common features of successful teaching and learning. Feedback aims to reduce the gap between where the students are and where they are meant to be. In order to bridge this gap, teachers must incorporate feedback in classroom effectively. There is a need to understand different ways in which feedback can be provided in classroom. There is also a need to identify and implement simple yet systematic procedure to provide regular and transparent feedback in classroom. This study presents deliberate use of spaced questioning to understand how to take full benefits from feedback in the classroom. Feedback is summarized based on the errors committed by the students. Instead of considering the errors simply as deficit of knowledge or inability of students to think correctly, they can be treated as opportunities to bridge the gap of what students know and what they should know. Knowing and acknowledging these errors is the key contribution of a teacher, which can be attained through feedback in classroom. The participants in this study were first year engineering students of 14 classes, enrolled for the Engineering Mechanics course. An ICT tool named MKCL SuperCampus, was used to pose questions and to track real time individual performance in the classroom. The use of the ICT tool provided an easy and fearless environment for students to participate comfortably, thereby motivating them to make and learn from errors and to engage more while learning in classes.

Evaluation of Computer-Based Assessment Methods for Engineering Courses

Several computer-based assessment methods have been used in chemical engineering classes at the University of Missouri-Rolla. This experience provides the basis for an evaluation of the technology and human factors involved in the application of these methods. From the student's perspective, the major strength of computer-based assessments is the instantaneous feedback that is provided. From the instructor's perspective, the major strengths are twofold: 1) rapid grading and 2) individualized assessments. The major drawbacks for the students are the loss of partial credit and the insecurity associated with working in a virtual environment. Faculty find that the time required to construct effective computer-based assessments is much greater than that for paper-based assessments. Unfortunately, the increase in construction time can be greater than the reduction in grading time. With the current technology, it is extremely difficult to develop large, multi-step problems requir...

Improving Student Learning Experience in an Engineering Graphics Classroom through a Rapid Feedback and Re-submission Cycle

2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings

Pictorial representation of three-dimensional objects has been one of the oldest forms of communication. Engineering graphics courses deal with the art of documenting threedimensional objects in a two-dimensional format. Prior literature shows that graphics communication is a key skill for an engineer to possess. However, students in engineering graphics classrooms struggle to understand the concepts being taught due to a variety of reasons including poor visualization skills, limited class time, huge class sizes and unavailability of simple demonstrations. In order to address some of these issues, the instructors of the engineering graphics course at Tuskegee University, whose student population consists of predominantly underrepresented minorities, implemented a rapid feedback-resubmission cycle for students' homework. In one section of this course, the instructor provided rapid feedback on each of the homework submitted and allowed a resubmission of the same. During the resubmission, the students are expected to understand their mistakes in the original submission and correct those. They are awarded a maximum of 80% of the lost grade for the corrections. This cycle is supposed to give the students additional time to master the concept. As all these tasks depend upon their visualization skills, the resubmission cycle is expected to improve their said skill as well. This study uses Purdue Spatial Visualizations of Rotations test to measure the visualization skills of students. The results show some promising trends. The students who resubmitted their work frequently showed a greater improvement in their visualization skills compared to those who did not. While the class itself is helping students in developing some visualization skills, the rapid feedback and resubmission cycle provides an added advantage.

Exploring the possibilities of automated feedback for third level students

Form@re : Open Journal per la Formazione in Rete, 2019

There are a multitude of methods of providing third level students with feedback on their performance. Feedback can take many forms, from handwritten comments, to individual verbal feedback delivered face to face, and some educators are providing recorded audio feedback delivered using an institutional Virtual Learning Environment. One of the challenges at third level is providing substantive and constructive formative and/or terminal feedback in a timely fashion. Students are becoming more self-directed in terms of their learning and they are becoming more demanding regarding feedback. This paper discusses the use of a free open source solution (Auto Multiple Choice, AMC) to provide constructive feedback to students in an effective and timely manner. This method of automated assessment feedback has been used by faculty in Physics at the University of Limerick to reduce the turnaround time in making comments available to students since 2014. The experience of using AMC has also resu...