Peer-mediated learning in action: a feedback-based framework linking the first year to the capstone experience

Learning is a social process: participating in authentic communities of practice allows students to engage in contributory and mediational forms of learning and knowledge building. While capstone experiences often provide such a learning framework, students at all levels, including first-years, stand to benefit from such models. The goal of this project is to create a community where MIT students learn with each other and contribute to each other's learning by linking a first-year communication class (21W.015 Writing about Sports) to a disciplinary Science/Engineering capstone (2.980 Sports Technology: Engineering and Innovation). We have already piloted assignments which engage students in communication-based practice and feedback loops. Our proposed systematic framework allows both the first-years to explore interdisciplinary projects and authentic genres, and the upperclassmen to receive rhetorically framed feedback in order to effectively argue for real solutions to technical problems.