Abstract:
Industrial Projects IV is a compulsory capstone module for students enrolled for the
Baccalaureus Technologiae (BTech) in Electrical Engineering (Power) in South Africa. Power
engineering students need to submit six different assignments during the course of a year, where three
of these assignments are formative in nature. Students have the opportunity to improve on their work
with each subsequent assignment, with the sixth assignment being summative in nature. However, are
power engineering students really applying the academic feedback given on their formative assessments
to improve on their future submissions? The purpose of this paper is to highlight that only a small
percentage of students in a capstone module are really applying academic feedback provided to them,
while the majority of students seem to be fluctuating in its use, with some initially disregarding it and
then finally heeding it again. This inconsistency is highlighted by contrasting student results for four
different submissions, determining which students increased or decreased their grades from one
submission to the next. Results indicate that those students who improved their grades on 66% of their
submissions (being two out of three successive submissions) had a 97% chance of achieving academic
success, while 76% of them finished within the top 25 students in the course. A key recommendation
of this research is to share its findings with future power engineering students, thereby creating an
awareness of the importance of engaging more with the academic feedback given on formative
assessments.
