Feedback in Engineering Education

The National Student Survey (NSS) conducted in the UK indicated a perceived weakness in feedback practice in the engineering discipline. Foundational courses in engineering are often characterized with a large cohort of students, where lectures are mostly held in lecture theatres that create a physical distance between students and teachers affecting students' interaction and involvement (Geske, 1992). The feedback loop is often difficult to initiate given that communication in large classes often operate in a single direction, offering students less opportunity to give or receive feedback. Given the challenges in implementing good feedback practice, research on feedback in large class has been a popular area of research in education and it is also gaining attention in engineering education research.

Research in the area may involve examining the feedback processes in large classes, exploring methods of enhancing feedback with the use of technology enhanced tools and understanding students' and/or teachers' perception of feedback using survey-based approach.

References:

Bamforth, S., Perkin, G., & Glass, J. (2013). Effective feedback from the student perspective. Higher Education Academy. Retrieved from http://www-new1.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/Documents/disciplines/stem/conf-proceedings-2013/Eng/abstracs/eng_039.pdf
Cox, M. F., Hahn, J., McNeill, N., Cekic, O., Zhu, J., & London, J. (2011). Enhancing the quality of engineering graduate teaching assistants through multidimensional feedback. Advances in Engineering Education (ASEE), 2(3). Retrieved from http://advances.asee.org/wp-content/uploads/vol02/issue03/papers/aee-vol02-issue03-p04.pdf
Geske, J. (1992). Overcoming the drawbacks of the large lecture class. College Teaching, 40(4), 151 – 154.
Hargreaves, E. (2011). Teachers' feedback to pupils: "Like so many bottles thrown out to sea?". Assessment Reform in Education (pp. 121-133). Netherlands: Springer.
Mendes, P., Thomas, T., & Cleaver, E. (2011). The meaning of prompt feedback and other student perceptions of feedback: Should national student survey scores be taken at face value? Engineering Education: Journal of the Higher Education Academy Engineering Subject Centre, 6(1). Retrieved from http://84.22.166.132/journal/index.php/ee/article/viewArticle/172/247.html
Nair, C. S., Patil, A., & Mertova, P. (2011). Enhancing the quality of engineering education by utilizing student feedback: Quality and the engineering student experience: An institutional approach. European Journal of Engineering Education, 36(1), 3-12.
Walker, D. J., & Palmer, E. (2011). The relationship between student understanding, satisfaction and performance in an Australian engineering programme. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 36(2), 157-170.
Webb, A., & Willis, L. (2010). Enhancing feedback for engineering students. Retrieved from https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/bitstream/2134/9222/2/enhancing-feedback-for-engineering-students.pdf