Our project focuses on communication assignments and formative assessment to improve the teaching of engineering design. Specifically, we use Calibrated Peer-Review (CPR) - an end-to-end computer-mediated learning environment developed at UCLA- that seamlessly integrates writing as a vehicle for critical thinking into a technical or content course. We are testing the premise that a series of well-designed communication assignments can serve as enablers for students to enact the "habits of mind" fundamental to professional engineering practice. These assignments fully exploit CPR's four web-delivered, guided-inductive workspaces that (1) teach students how to recognize levels of accomplishment for specific activities, (2) guide peer-review sessions that produce both qualitative and quantitative formative assessment data, and (3) encourage deep-structured student self-reflection both on the task product and on the task process.
We are using the assessment data collected by CPR platform to provide formative assessment, both for students and for faculty in engineering design courses. Our project exploits writing/communication as an analog for thinking in order to understand how students learn in a design course. This deepened awareness of the learning process, in turn, helps instructors to formulate activities that engage the students in types of "second order" problem-solving skills, such as meta-cognition, social context sensitivity, and self-reliance within the process of learning.
