Comparing Instructor and Student Verbal Feedback in Design Reviews of a Capstone Design Course: Differences in Topic and Function

摘要

Recent implementations of design review meetings in engineering design courses encourage student peers to provide feedback, in addition to the course instructor and industry client. The purpose of this investigation was to compare feedback provided by students and course instructors and to determine how student peers' feedback related to their own performance in the design course. We collected verbal feedback comments provided by the instructor and student peers in twelve design review meetings of a management engineering capstone design course. A total of 553 comments were coded along two dimensions: topic (design, project management, or communication) and function (comprehension, evaluation, or recommendation). Comments falling in the comprehension function were also further coded using an existing question-type typology. A comparison of instructor and student feedback revealed that the instructor provided not only more feedback than individual students, but also distributed it better across the different topics and functions. Specifically, the instructor provides more feedback in the topics of design, communication and project management and is more likely to provide direct assessments and recommendations to student teams. Stronger student teams (i.e., those with better design outcomes) generally provide more feedback to their peers. Findings can help instructors promote better feedback-giving for themselves and students alike.