Helping professors craft strategies to improve first-year engineering student success using weekly feedback forms

Students’ success in their first year of an engineering program is of great attention and importance to engineering schools and students alike. While the influencing factors are complex and multifaceted, workload and wellbeing play an integral role in students’ success. Since professors can impact both of these factors through tailoring their delivery, in-class interaction, and workload expectation, the need for effective and continuous two-way communication pathways among students and professors focused on instruction, workload, and wellbeing aspects is evident. In this study, using weekly surveys covering the above-mentioned aspects and tailored to each week’s course activities, data was collected and analyzed to allow professors to understand the students’ perspectives on the assigned workload and effectiveness of the lecture delivery, along with additional information pertaining to the instructional environment. The aim of this work is to enable students to obtain a greater degree of ownership of their learning using clear and continuous communication channels with the instructional team, as well as realize the value in student-centric feedback forms. The study has concluded with valuable insights generated, and improvement in student participation and survey implementation over multiple revisions to the protocol. Although the COVID-19 pandemic led to the premature termination of the pilot program, key insights will be carried forth towards the following school year, with an emphasis on tailoring surveys for online learning, improving implementation, and more defined recommendations to improve the course.We would like to acknowledge the University of Toronto’s Institute for Studies in Transdisciplinary Engineering Education & Practice (ISTEP) for providing funding for this research and our colleagues who have provided insights on implementing feedback forms within higher education