Student Technical Review for Industry-standard Design of IoT (STRIDE)
Grant Name
Applied Learning and Innovation Grant (ALIGN)Abstract
Large-scale IoT modules require students to integrate software, hardware, communication protocols and real-time behaviour. While automated tests can establish whether a program compiles or produces an expected output, they provide limited support for evaluating why a student selected a particular architecture, whether the design is maintainable, or how it could be improved. In large cohorts, instructors are consequently unable to provide every team with timely, detailed and individualised feedback on these design decisions.
STRIDE is an AI-supported formative feedback environment designed to strengthen students’ design reasoning, feedback literacy and ability to improve their work iteratively. STRIDE is not intended to replace instructor judgement or determine grades. It supports instructors by consolidating evidence from build results, program structure and student-provided design rationales into a preliminary feedback report that must be reviewed and approved by an instructor before release.
The educational intervention follows a structured feedback–reflection–revision cycle. Students submit a draft repository together with a short explanation of their design decisions. STRIDE analyses the submission using deterministic build tools, structural code analysis and a language model, after which the instructor verifies and, where necessary, edits the generated feedback. Students then interpret the feedback, document an improvement plan, revise their implementation and explain the changes made. This process positions feedback as an activity that students must interpret and act upon, rather than information that is merely transmitted to them.
The project will initially be developed and validated using repositories from IoT and embedded-systems modules using C and MicroPython, with an initial teaching pilot in an appropriate module such as INF2012. Its effectiveness will be evaluated through changes in competency rubric scores, students’ use of feedback, feedback turnaround time, instructor workload, student self-efficacy and qualitative perceptions of the learning process. The main deliverables will include the STRIDE platform, an IoT software design and implementation competency rubric, student feedback-literacy materials, instructor moderation protocols and a transferable implementation guide for other project-based computing modules.