The Impact of Cambridge Supervisions on Student Performance in a Dynamics Course

One of the most effective methods for teaching nearly any engineering course is to have students apply their knowledge to solve problems. Engineering instructors encourage students to spend more time solving problems (time-on-task) through grade based incentives. While a variety of techniques for assigning points to student efforts have been employed, traditionally the number of points a student receives is primarily based on the “correctness” of their solutions. There are a variety of problems with simply collecting and grading student homework including the time students wait for feedback, the limited amount of feedback provided on assignments (typically a few short written comments), and the inability to discuss the feedback provided. In this work we present an alternative to traditional grading motivated by cognitive research on student learning from feedback. The results of a pilot study of this method indicates that the new method has the potential to increase student persistence and improve student obtainment of learning objectives.