SHIFTING RESPONSIBILITIES: USING PEER ASSESSMENT IN SENIOR, ENGINEERING DESIGN TO PROVIDE EFFECTIVE SUPPORT AND MEANINGFUL FEEDBACK DESPITE LARGE CLASS SIZE
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract – Urban Water Systems Design is a required, senior engineering design course for undergraduate students in the Water Resources and Environmental Engineering programs at the University of Guelph. A central component to this course has been a challenging, stormwater management design and simulation project. Recently, enrollment has increased from approximately 50 to 90 students. With these increased numbers, it is no longer feasible for the instructor to provide individualized, rich and robust feedback on the project. Rather than eliminating or simplifying the project, which is a highly valuable learning activity, peer assessment was investigated as an option. In Fall 2016, peer assessment was implemented for two term tests and a design project. In addition to addressing resource constraints, this shift in responsibilities takes advantage of the active, collaborative, learning opportunities provided by grading tests in class and giving feedback to and receiving feedback from others on design work and report writing. To achieve the largest benefit possible, best practices suggested in the literature were followed, such as training peer assessors, including developing a rubric with the class to enhance understanding of expectations; using multiple assessors to address student concerns about fairness; and incorporating reflection on the peer assessment activities. Data were collected through two surveys administered before and after the course’s peer evaluation activities and through graded reflections on peer evaluation activities. Most students thought they learned as much or more than they would have without the incorporation of peer evaluation. Based on predominantly positive student comments and fair grading, peer grading of tests will be used in future with a few minor modifications. Most students also found the peer assessment of design reports to be fair, with a reasonable time commitment. Some students were troubled by the variability of grades given by peers. Enhanced training was suggested to help students grade more consistently and provide more effective feedback.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.037 | 0.091 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".