Improving Peer Feedback in Project-Based Learning Contexts: An Investigation into a First-Year Engineering Intervention

Katherine Drinkwater; Olivia Ryan; Marin Jayne Fisher Hale; Susan Sajadi; Mark Vincent Huerta

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: June 26, 2024
Conference Session: Educational Research and Methods Division (ERM) Technical Session 29
Tagged Division: Educational Research and Methods Division (ERM)
Page Count: 22
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--47593
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/47593
Download Count: 167

Paper Authors

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Katherine Drinkwater Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

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Katie Drinkwater is a first-year PhD student in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. She received a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Duke University. Her research interests include engineering extracurriculars, PBL, design in informal learning environments, makerspaces, and women in engineering.

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Olivia Ryan Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

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Olivia Ryan is a Ph.D. student in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. She holds a B.S. in engineering with a specialization in electrical engineering from Roger Williams University. Her research interests include developing professional skills for engineering students and understanding mathematics barriers that exist within engineering.

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Marin Jayne Fisher Hale Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

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Marin is a doctoral student from Aurora, IL. She holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Brigham Young University. Her current research interests include teamwork in student teams and religious identity within engineering. When not working on research, she enjoys hikes, road biking, and coaching high school color guard.

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Susan Sajadi Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

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Susan Sajadi is an assistant professor at Virginia Tech in the department of engineering education. She has a BS and MS in Biomedical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Engineering Education Systems and Design from Arizona State University. Prior, she worked as an engineer in the medical device industry.

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Mark Vincent Huerta Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University orcid.org/0000-0003-2962-0724

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Mark Huerta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. He earned his PhD in Engineering Education Systems & Design at Arizona State University and has a BS/MS in Biomedical Engineering. His research focuses on exploring and understanding engineering learning environments. He harnesses these insights to propose solutions that encourage the creation of safe and inclusive educational environments conducive to learning, professional development, and innovation. His research interests include graduate student mentorship, faculty development, mental health and well-being, teamwork and group dynamics, and the design of project-based learning classes.

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Abstract

In an increasingly collaborative and globalized world, effective teamwork is an essential skill for engineers. To help students develop teamwork skills, project-based learning (PBL) courses, including first-year cornerstones, have become a component of most engineering programs. However, having students work in teams on an engineering project does not necessarily ensure effective teamwork is practiced or that students further develop their teamwork skills. Peer evaluation systems, such as CATME, have been developed to help assess teamwork skills and provide feedback to team members. Formative feedback from peers can encourage effective team behaviors and decrease social loafing. While CATME evaluations collect both quantitative ranking and qualitative comments, qualitative peer comments often lack objective, helpful feedback due to several potential biases. To combat these biases, it has become clear that intentional instruction on how to give feedback is essential. Previous literature shows an improvement in the quality of both quantitative CATME ratings and qualitative comments after students received feedback training. Informed by positive results of previous interventions and our own challenges with low-quality written feedback, we explored the implementation of a feedback intervention for first-year engineering students in a first-year PBL course. We created a 30-minute, interactive presentation that covered common pitfalls of peer feedback, qualities of constructive feedback, and examples of helpful and unhelpful feedback. Our intervention was presented to six classes of first-year engineering students at a large public university in the American Southeast. This paper seeks to describe the development of the in-class intervention, observations from implementation, and a preliminary investigation of the impact of intervention on peer feedback quality. To assess the effectiveness of the intervention in improving feedback quality, student feedback comments from two classes in Fall 2023 are quantitatively compared to comments from the same course and instructor in Fall 2022. The class feedback comments are compared on total length as well as count of the type of comments, in line with Hattie and Timperley’s framework of feedback. Hattie and Timperley (2007) identified four levels of feedback: task, process, self-regulation, and self. The intervention was designed to increase the number of process and self-regulation comments. From preliminary analysis, we expect that the in-class intervention increased the overall length of peer comments and increased the number of constructive process or self-regulation level comments. Findings from this study include implications for methods of implementing peer feedback in PBL courses, increased focus on qualitative CATME comments, and further investigation of formative peer feedback in first-year engineering courses.

Citation
Format

Drinkwater, K., & Ryan, O., & Fisher Hale, M. J., & Sajadi, S., & Huerta, M. V. (2024, June), Improving Peer Feedback in Project-Based Learning Contexts: An Investigation into a First-Year Engineering Intervention Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--47593

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - In an increasingly collaborative and globalized world, effective teamwork is an essential skill for engineers. To help students develop teamwork skills, project-based learning (PBL) courses, including first-year cornerstones, have become a component of most engineering programs. However, having students work in teams on an engineering project does not necessarily ensure effective teamwork is practiced or that students further develop their teamwork skills. Peer evaluation systems, such as CATME, have been developed to help assess teamwork skills and provide feedback to team members. Formative feedback from peers can encourage effective team behaviors and decrease social loafing. 
While CATME evaluations collect both quantitative ranking and qualitative comments, qualitative peer comments often lack objective, helpful feedback due to several potential biases. To combat these biases, it has become clear that intentional instruction on how to give feedback is essential. Previous literature shows an improvement in the quality of both quantitative CATME ratings and qualitative comments after students received feedback training. Informed by positive results of previous interventions and our own challenges with low-quality written feedback, we explored the implementation of a feedback intervention for first-year engineering students in a first-year PBL course. We created a 30-minute, interactive presentation that covered common pitfalls of peer feedback, qualities of constructive feedback, and examples of helpful and unhelpful feedback. Our intervention was presented to six classes of first-year engineering students at a large public university in the American Southeast. 
This paper seeks to describe the development of the in-class intervention, observations from implementation, and a preliminary investigation of the impact of intervention on peer feedback quality. To assess the effectiveness of the intervention in improving feedback quality, student feedback comments from two classes in Fall 2023 are quantitatively compared to comments from the same course and instructor in Fall 2022. The class feedback comments are compared on total length as well as count of the type of comments, in line with Hattie and Timperley’s framework of feedback. Hattie and Timperley (2007) identified four levels of feedback: task, process, self-regulation, and self. The intervention was designed to increase the number of process and self-regulation comments. From preliminary analysis, we expect that the in-class intervention increased the overall length of peer comments and increased the number of constructive process or self-regulation level comments. Findings from this study include implications for methods of implementing peer feedback in PBL courses, increased focus on qualitative CATME comments, and further investigation of formative peer feedback in first-year engineering courses. 
AU  - Katherine Drinkwater
AU  - Olivia Ryan
AU  - Marin Jayne Fisher Hale
AU  - Susan Sajadi
AU  - Mark Vincent Huerta
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Improving Peer Feedback in Project-Based Learning Contexts: An Investigation into a First-Year Engineering Intervention
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/47593
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--47593
ER  -