TY - GEN
T1 - Effectiveness of peer review in teaching and learning user centered conceptual design among large cohorts of information technology students
AU - Anvari, Farshid
AU - Tran, Hien Minh Thi
AU - Richards, Deborah
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Conceptual design often sets the direction of the development of a product. Educating Software Engineering and Information Technology (IT) students to consider the needs of users during the conceptual design stage is important. The assessment of conceptual design is a time consuming process. When budgets are limited, financial resources are inadequately allocated to allow staff to spend quality time assessing the conceptual design artifacts of large classes. We present a methodology to teach, capture and evaluate conceptual design artifacts for large classes. In two separate studies, two groups of over 185 undergraduate IT students reviewed their peers' design artifacts using a comprehensive rubric. Their reviews were later checked by two researchers using the same rubric. It was found that not only were the student-peers' reviews close to the researchers' reviews, it was possible to give students valuable and timely feedback and scaffold them to reflect, an essential characteristic for professional competence. In addition, we found that assessment by staff was not feasible due to inadequate resources. We conclude that for large classes, conceptual design artifacts can be evaluated and valuable feedback provided in a timely manner by peers with the guidance of a comprehensive rubric.
AB - Conceptual design often sets the direction of the development of a product. Educating Software Engineering and Information Technology (IT) students to consider the needs of users during the conceptual design stage is important. The assessment of conceptual design is a time consuming process. When budgets are limited, financial resources are inadequately allocated to allow staff to spend quality time assessing the conceptual design artifacts of large classes. We present a methodology to teach, capture and evaluate conceptual design artifacts for large classes. In two separate studies, two groups of over 185 undergraduate IT students reviewed their peers' design artifacts using a comprehensive rubric. Their reviews were later checked by two researchers using the same rubric. It was found that not only were the student-peers' reviews close to the researchers' reviews, it was possible to give students valuable and timely feedback and scaffold them to reflect, an essential characteristic for professional competence. In addition, we found that assessment by staff was not feasible due to inadequate resources. We conclude that for large classes, conceptual design artifacts can be evaluated and valuable feedback provided in a timely manner by peers with the guidance of a comprehensive rubric.
KW - conceptual design assessment
KW - information technology education
KW - peer review
KW - persona
KW - reflective practice
KW - software engineering education
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85115636743&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ICSE-SEET52601.2021.00016
DO - 10.1109/ICSE-SEET52601.2021.00016
M3 - Conference proceeding contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85115636743
T3 - Proceedings - International Conference on Software Engineering
SP - 66
EP - 77
BT - Proceedings - 2021 IEEE/ACM 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering: Joint Track on Software Engineering Education and Training, ICSE-JSEET 2021
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
CY - Piscataway, NJ
T2 - 43rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering: Joint Track on Software Engineering Education and Training, ICSE-JSEET 2021
Y2 - 25 May 2021 through 28 May 2021
ER -