Using a Teaching Intervention and Calibrated Peer Review™ Diagnostics to Improve Visual Communication Skills

Abstract

Rice University’s bioengineering department incorporates written, oral, and visual communication instruction into its undergraduate curriculum to aid student learning and to prepare students to communicate their knowledge and discoveries precisely and persuasively. In a tissue culture lab course, we used a self- and peer-review tool called Calibrated Peer Review™ (CPR) to diagnose student learning gaps in visual communication skills on a poster assignment. We then designed an active learning intervention that required students to practice the visual communication skills that needed improvement and used CPR to measure the changes. After the intervention, we observed that students performed significantly better in their ability to develop high quality graphs and tables that represent experimental data. Based on these outcomes, we conclude that guided task practice, collaborative learning, and calibrated peer review can be used to improve engineering students’ visual communication skills.

Application of Deep Learning Algorithms to Visual Communication Courses

“…During the teaching process of visual communication courses, the rendering of artistic style is particularly important. Different rendering methods will present different effects and different visual perceptions for the audiences ( Yang and Hsu, 2017 ; Saterbak et al, 2018 ). Therefore, the image style transfer network is designed through deep learning methods to provide better visual communication courses.…”

Evaluating Assessment in MOOCs

“…Topping (2009) argues that this is an effective approach and encourages its use. Building on this guidance, some researchers have used Calibrated Peer Reviews (CPR) as guides for peer assessment, reporting progress in learning outcomes after its application and the strong instructor-peer correlation in overall grades (Furman & Robinson, 2003;Schneider, 2015;Saterbak et al, 2018;Suen, 2014). It is presented as a mechanism for learning evaluation (Saterbak et al, 2018) and an easily applicable approach to MOOC (Suen, 2014).…”

“…Building on this guidance, some researchers have used Calibrated Peer Reviews (CPR) as guides for peer assessment, reporting progress in learning outcomes after its application and the strong instructor-peer correlation in overall grades (Furman & Robinson, 2003;Schneider, 2015;Saterbak et al, 2018;Suen, 2014). It is presented as a mechanism for learning evaluation (Saterbak et al, 2018) and an easily applicable approach to MOOC (Suen, 2014). A study gives low or moderate quality feedback, and recommends it as "assessment for learning" rather than "assessment of learning" (Admiraal et al, 2014).…”

The Concept of Active Learning and the Measurement of Learning Outcomes: A Review of Research in Engineering Higher Education

“…Empirical research-based justification for superior learning (n = 17) 1 "Numerous studies have demonstrated that students learn better when they are actively engaged in the learning processes (references)." [47] (p. 240) [13,39,41,47,48,51,52,[54][55][56]60,[62][63][64]75,81,85] Taken-for-granted justification for superior learning (n = 14) 1…”

“…The problems seem easy when the instructor works them at the board; it is not until problems are assigned and students get stuck part way through or fail to complete them that real learning occurs." [48] (p. 188) [40,41,43,47,48,68,82,84,85] Learning theory (n = 8) 1…”