Teaching and Grading in Conferences: Improving Student’s Understandings of Expectations and Evaluations

This paper describes the results of a novel approach in a senior mechanical engineering lab course, which combined team reporting, self-assessment of writing, conference grading, and consultative techniques that help learners improve both their communicative competence and their performance. We argue that the approach increases communications assignments and makes them more effective as teaching tools, without increasing the professor’s workload. Moreover, the approach is similar to industry practices of reviewing communications face-to-face and evaluating them in the context of assigned project objectives, and therefore better prepares students for the demands of the workplace. In addition to the instructor’s assessment, the reactions of the students were obtained by oral surveys. The results indicated that the students believed the approach to increase their understanding of assignments, their attention to and understanding of the instructor’s comments, and their motivation. Finally, initial assessment of student writing indicated improvement resulting from the innovation.