(291c) Using Peer Review to Improve Student Learning Outcomes Associated with Ill-Structured Problems

There is a gap between the well-defined engineering problems that students solve in their coursework and the ill-structured types of problems that engineers encounter in professional practice. Some obstacles that prevent a more routine use of ill-structured problems in engineering courses is that assessing student solutions and providing specific feedback to learners takes more time for open-ended problems. One way to overcome these barriers is to get the learners involved in the assessment and feedback process. This presentation will focus on the use of peer review as a mechanism to help individual students and student teams improve their problem solving approaches. Specific peer review cases will demonstrate how to structure a review process that drives students toward writing meaningful evaluations for the work of their peers and includes time for students to reflect on their work and how to improve it. Evidence showing the positive impact of peer review on student learning outcomes will be shown.