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Evaluating Peer-led Feedback in Asynchronous Design Critiques: A Question-centered Approach

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Conference

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Location

Virtual Conference

Publication Date

July 26, 2021

Start Date

July 26, 2021

End Date

July 19, 2022

Conference Session

Design Teams 1

Tagged Division

Design in Engineering Education

Page Count

14

DOI

10.18260/1-2--37103

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/37103

Download Count

451

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Paper Authors

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Ada Hurst University of Waterloo Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-2481-8566

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Ada Hurst is a continuing lecturer in the Department of Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo. Her research falls in the areas of design cognition, and design teaching and learning. She regularly teaches capstone design project courses in the Management Engineering program.

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Christine Duong University of Waterloo

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Christine Duong is a third year student at the University of Waterloo in the Life Science Psychology program.

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Meagan Flus University of Waterloo Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-8598-7796

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Meagan Flus is a MASc student in the Department of Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo. Her current research area is engineering design education with specific interest in design cognition at hackathons.

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Gregory Litster University of Waterloo

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Greg Litster is a graduate student pursuing his MASc in Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo. His research interests are focused on student design education, the design process and work-integrated learning.

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Jordan Nickel University of Waterloo Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-8455-6433

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Jordan Nickel is a MASc student in the Department of Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo. His research focuses on requirement conflicts and trade-offs in design.

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Aaron Dai University of Waterloo

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Aaron Dai is a fourth year student as a Candidate for a Bachelors of Applied Science in Management Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

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Abstract

Design critiques are a central component of the design studio. In engineering education, where the design studio pedagogy is becoming increasingly popular, peer-led critiques can play an important role to support and complement the feedback student teams receive from instructors and clients. In capstone design courses, peer critiques are typically delivered in face-to-face, synchronous environments, where students can demo their design progress and engage in constructive back-and-forth discussion with their peers. The disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused many design courses to be held remotely, has forced instructors to re-imagine how peer critique can be delivered in a virtual, mostly asynchronous setting.

In this paper, we describe and evaluate an asynchronous and virtual implementation of peer critiques that are delivered using a text-based discussion forum. Taking a question-asking lens, we analyze hundreds of questions posed by students in asynchronous peer critiques of a capstone design course, and compare the distributions of low-level, deep reasoning, and generative design questions to results of prior studies that have produced analogous distributions in conventional face-to-face settings. We find that a larger portion of peer inquiry that is delivered in written form in asynchronous critiques is composed of generative design questions, which serve to expand the design space, and which have been previously found to be highly valued by design teams. Our findings serve to not only evaluate the effectiveness of the written, asynchronous approach to design critiques, but also support a discussion on how some of its features can be useful even when in-person peer design critiques are feasible.

Hurst, A., & Duong, C., & Flus, M., & Litster, G., & Nickel, J., & Dai, A. (2021, July), Evaluating Peer-led Feedback in Asynchronous Design Critiques: A Question-centered Approach Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--37103

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