Fostering Evaluative Judgement Through a Supportive Learning Environment

Fostering students' evaluative judgement is essential for making decisions and reflecting on the quality of their work and that of others. In the workplace, graduates need evaluative judgement to assess if their work meets standards and, more importantly, when they need to ask for assistance from others or undertake further learning. At the Engineering Design and Innovation Centre at the National University of Singapore, the Innovation and Design Programme runs on the core of interdisciplinary learning. Interdisciplinary learning requires students to be equipped with evaluative judgement and the ability to communicate with teammates from different disciplines and make a decision on the quality of interdisciplinary work. With the above understanding, we designed two studios (Robotics and Circular Economy) in CDE3301R: Ideas to Proof-of-Concept to develop evaluative judgement in students. Student engagement drove our studio delivery and exercises were planned to motivate learning, promote higher-order thinking with a supportive learning environment. Industry inputs and feedback were also sought in this process. The students' growth and learning experience were shaped through evaluative judgement. Each evaluative judgement exercise required the students to present their work, perform peer assessment and revise their work based on feedback received. At the end of the first evaluative judgement exercise, each team conducted a structured reflection on their learning experience, which evidenced the benefits from the students' experience. Throughout the semester, four rounds of evaluative judgement exercises were conducted, incorporating industry feedback. Positive outcomes of these activities were observed in the teams' performance pre and post-intervention, the teams' perceptions of their learning, as well as the interim assessment scores received by the teams in this studio. Students exhibited critical thinking and performed at higher cognitive levels on the Bloom's Taxonomy, which was observed from their performance and samples of their work.