2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Providing meaningful feedback to each student in large courses can be time-consuming. In large laboratory courses, feedback can take even longer due to the nature of the assignments. Some features integrated into learning management systems (LMS) or tools like GradeScope, can improve efficiency and reduce grading time. However, there is still room for improvement. During the fall 2024 semester, this team explored additional ways to speed up the time it takes for students to identify mistakes made during a biomedical instrumentation laboratory course. The new feedback mechanisms included autograded pre-lab questions, additional checkpoints during lab experiments, in-class self-evaluation of circuit designs, and improved post-lab reflection prompts. The goal of these improvements was to decrease the amount of time between when the mistake was made and when the students were made aware of the mistake. Our hope is that students will learn more from their mistakes and will be less likely to repeat them if their mistakes are identified sooner.

We used participatory action research to identify improvements and analyze outcomes. The research team included the professor, a former teaching assistant, former students, a current teaching assistant, and a current undergraduate laboratory student. Additional feedback was also solicited from students enrolled in the course. So far, the new additions have improved the speed of feedback given to the students. Additional data will be collected and analyzed throughout the rest of the fall 2024 semester.

This biomedical instrumentation laboratory course is required for third-year bioengineering students at a large public university in the Midwestern United States. Students in other engineering majors also enroll in the course as a technical elective. In addition to the laboratory course, the students are also enrolled in a complementary lecture course that covers the theoretical background of biomedical instrumentation.