Designing Rubrics to Assess Engineering Design, Professional Practice, and Communication Over Three Years of Study

Abstract

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Reflections From Teaching Assistants in Combined Learning Assistant and Course Grader Roles

“…In a review of literature on task-level formative feedback, Shute suggested that for most students, feedback with higher levels of specificity but lower complexity resulted in improved learning. However, characteristics of the learner are of importance to the impact feedback [6]. Our experiences also suggest that the characteristics of the learner or student are of importance.…”

“…Formative feedback can be categorized as general summary feedback or task-level feedback [8]. Both categories of formative feedback are used in the courses in the form of written feedback and the use of the rubrics outlined in [6]. In our experience, the combination of the grader and LA roles allows for higher quality task-level feedback.…”

“…Simple feedback is provided in the following forms: (a) no feedback; (b) verification of correctness; (c) repeat-until correct feedback; and (d) error flagging. Elaborated feedback provided in the following forms: (a) topic contingent; (b) response contingent; (c) prompts; (d) misconceptions; and (e) informative tutoring [6]. Depending on the feedback context and our past experiences with and knowledge of specific students, different forms of feedback may be best.…”

“…Teaching assistants are present in some lectures and also conduct one-on-one meetings with their assigned teams. In each course, the assessment of engineering design, professional practice, and communication is conducted by assessing scaffold, consecutive engineering design reports [6]. Teaching assistants act as course graders when grading such reports.…”

“…Teaching assistants act as course graders when grading such reports. In the process of design report grading, grades are assigned using rubrics and written, formative feedback is provided [6].…”