STUDENT RESPONSES TO AND PERCEPTIONS OF FEEDBACK RECEIVED ON A SERIES OF MODEL-ELICITING ACTIVITIES: A CASE STUDY

摘要

One challenge in implementing open-ended problems is assessing students' responses because the open-ended nature of the problems allow for numerous suitable, "good" responses. Specifically, formative assessment - providing the students with feedback on intermittent solutions - can be especially challenging when it is hoped that students will understand and respond to the feedback in ways that indicate learning has taken place. The aim of this study is to examine how students in a first-year engineering course perceive and respond to feedback received from a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) and their peers as they iterate through multiple drafts of their solutions to Model-Eliciting Activities (MEAs). In this paper, we report case findings based upon three interviews each from four students from a single team that participated in the interviews following three MEAs implemented in a single semester. Findings indicated all four students struggled with the feedback received from their peers. The students agreed GTA feedback was helpful in improving their MEA solutions and was more useful than the peer feedback. However, the students had contradictory perceptions of the level of specificity and vagueness in the GTA feedback. This study supports the notion that students need training and education both in how to give feedback as well as how to respond to feedback.