Influence of feedback on assessment by using semantic learning waves

Abstract

According to feedback provided by industry on local and international scale argued about skill deficiencies in engineering graduates, and findings from both cognitive science and thousands of educational research studies, there are serious deficiencies in traditional teaching methods. These have had the effects of provoking calls for changes in how engineering curricula are structured, delivered, and assessed (Felder, 2012). The pedagogic community has critiqued how engineering courses are taught and assessed, showing crucial misalignment between assessment approaches and assessment purpose (Biggs, 2003). The main principle in education, according to Biggs (2003) is the notion of constructive alignment, where explicit learning objectives are aligned to forms of learning, methods of teaching and assessment. Many engineering graduates are not truly career ready, despite intensified efforts to teach and assess many of the bodies knowledge and skill sets that are demanded by industry and mandated by accreditation agencies. Empirical evidence of this gap is spotty and tentative but appears to be growing. Wiggins (1989), who first related the term ‘authentic assessment’, defined ‘tasks set in a real-world context’ as tasks which ‘are either replicas of or analogous to the kinds of problems faced by adult citizens and consumers or professionals in the field.’ By using authentic real-world environments and exemplars in the assessment, educators can make engineering subjects more ‘visible’ (Winberg & Winberg, 2017), particularly if industry’s needs and recommendations are included in the design of engineering assessment practices. In the assessment, the feedback should meaningful, when it is a linked series of learning opportunities across the entire learning cycle. This research paper will focus on how to enhance students’ performance by providing authentic and meaningful feedback during the assessment process in engineering education.Building on this line of thinking (Boud and Molloy 2013; Carless 2015; Carless and Boud 2018), feedback is conceptualised as a process in which learners make sense of comments about the quality of their work in order to inform the development of future performance or learning strategies.