Resumen de Upping the average: Manipulating peer feedback quantity and its effects on feedback quality
Gordon G. Krauss, Andrea Vasquez, Joseph Sinopoli, Laura Palucki Blake
Peer feedback during design reviews in engineering design courses can be limited in its effectiveness due to time limitationsto solicit and respond to feedback and to self-censorship of comments. These actors tend to be prevalent in the traditionalquestion and answer period following most in-class design reviews. The net effect is a reduced quantity of feedback onwhich the designers may take action. Prior work has shown a significant increase in the quantity of feedback offered inwriting compared to that offered in a traditional question and answer (oral Q&A) format. The focus of this research is toinvestigate the ability of the instructors to manipulate the quantity of feedback offered by students during a design reviewby manipulating the expected number of comments during a design review. The quality of the feedback as a result of thismanipulation is also evaluated by the design teams in terms of comment importance, professional tone of the comment,comment originality, and ease of use of the comment. The authors manipulated the expected number of comments upwardfrom 2 to 4 across 3 sections of an introduction to design course over three design review exercises. The number ofcomments closely matched the number that students were told would be expected. The quality of the comments did notsubstantially differ across the sections, implying a greater quantity of comments can be obtained at negligible expense ofquality by setting a higher expectation on the quantity of comments.
