2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

We redesigned a yearlong biomedical engineering (BME) senior design course to make feedback literacy (i.e., seeking, appraising, and acting on feedback) an explicit learning outcome. The course adds role-based Student Advisory Boards (technical, clinical, regulatory, IP, business) with required "response-to-advice" replies and structured stakeholder interviewing.

This study analyzes two artifact sets from semester one: (a) end-of-term "memos to future students" (n=43) and (b) brief survey of usefulness ratings for advisory boards and stakeholder interviews. Using a feedback literacy capabilities lens (appreciation of purposes/sources, evaluative judgment, elicitation, enactment, affect management),
we coded evidence of feedback literacy within the memos and cross-tabbed capacities by feedback source.

In memos, prevalence was: appreciation 27/43 (62.8%), judgment 15/43 (34.9%), elicitation 8/43 (18.6%), enactment 5/43 (11.6%), affect 1/43 (2.3%); among writers showing any capacity (n=38), mean capacities per student = 1.47 (SD=0.92). External stakeholders dominated narratives of consequential movement (scoping, pivots, constraints). In the survey, stakeholder interviews were widely rated useful; advisory boards clustered from “a little useful” to “useful.”

Ultimately, this work contributes (1) a scalable model (role-based advisory boards, response-to-advice, stakeholder interviewing) for cultivating feedback literacy in BME capstones; and (2) an artifact-based approach instructors can use to monitor how students understand, seek, judge, and use feedback. Future work will link memo
themes to team artifacts and compare patterns across engineering disciplines.