Joshi Rucha, Ghosh Sujoy, Simileysky Alexander, Bhanot Mayank
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California, 2318 GBSF, 451 Health Sciences Dr., Davis, CA 95616 USA.
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Davis, CA 95616 USA.
Biomed Eng Educ. 2021;1(2):325-333. doi: 10.1007/s43683-021-00046-z. Epub 2021 Feb 12.
With a motivation to immerse students in engineering design, graphics communication, and computer aided design (CAD) skills early-on in the biomedical engineering curriculum, we launched a new 2-unit laboratory course on "Graphics Design in BME" in the Spring 2020 quarter for UC Davis sophomores. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the course met with the significant challenge of conversion to an online mode of teaching, instead of planned face-to-face instruction. Providing formative feedback was thought to be an important step to help students succeed in their final CAD project of the course. In the process of designing feedback, we found that the concept of feedback is still fragile in an online learning environment because online learning settings provide distinct pedagogical demands as compared to face-to-face settings. The situation is especially delicate in the context of contemporary higher education imparting engineering skills, where students attend large classes, with diminished opportunities to interact with the teaching staff. The challenge we faced was to provide meaningful dialogic feedback in an online environment, especially while teaching engineering graphics design to a large class. Here we addressed this challenge by focusing on the process of structuring meaningful feedback. We designed a project assignment to be submitted as multiple deliverables to be submitted in two-stages. Then, we characterized its feedback with multiple notions, such as dialogic iterative cycles, personalized, goal-directed, immediate, in written format, and having a peer assessment component. The process of providing formative feedback online through the structure mentioned in this paper resulted in students' improved scores on the final project elements. It also helped us identify the common issues students are faltering in a graphics design class, and provide customized guidance, ideal examples of expected work, and more resources to motivate each student group to achieve mastery of course content.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43683-021-00046-z.
为了让学生在生物医学工程课程的早期就沉浸于工程设计、图形通信和计算机辅助设计（CAD）技能中，我们于2020年春季为加州大学戴维斯分校的大二学生开设了一门新的2单元实验室课程“生物医学工程中的图形设计”。由于新冠疫情，该课程面临着转换为在线教学模式的重大挑战，而非原计划的面对面教学。提供形成性反馈被认为是帮助学生在课程的最终CAD项目中取得成功的重要一步。在设计反馈的过程中，我们发现反馈的概念在在线学习环境中仍然很脆弱，因为与面对面环境相比，在线学习环境有不同的教学要求。在当代高等教育传授工程技能的背景下，这种情况尤其微妙，因为学生们上大课，与教师互动的机会减少。我们面临的挑战是在在线环境中提供有意义的对话式反馈，尤其是在给大班学生教授工程图形设计时。在这里，我们通过关注构建有意义反馈的过程来应对这一挑战。我们设计了一个项目作业，分两个阶段提交多个可交付成果。然后，我们用多个概念来描述其反馈，比如对话式迭代循环、个性化、目标导向、即时、书面形式以及有同伴评估部分。通过本文所述的结构在线提供形成性反馈的过程，提高了学生在最终项目元素上的得分。它还帮助我们识别出学生在图形设计课程中遇到困难的常见问题，并提供定制化指导、预期作业的理想示例以及更多资源，以激励每个学生群体掌握课程内容。
在线版本包含可在10.1007/s43683-021-00046-z获取的补充材料。
