  Feedback is critical in education. This Innovative Practice Full Paper
reports lessons learned from improving the quality of feedback in a
semi-capstone software engineering course, with particular focus on how to
deliver productive feedback in large scale during project work. The
bachelor-level introduction to software engineering course is taken by about
500 students from eight study programs, organised into 72 project teams. The
course aims to educate reflective systems developers. The teaching staff
includes 29 teaching assistants as supervisor and product owners for teams.
Project teams get feedback on seven deliverables as part of formative portfolio
assessment. Students expressed frustration on feedback not being aligned, that
they got critique on topics not stated in assignments and that teaching
assistants were reluctant to discuss the feedback. This article provides a
description of the course design, an assessment of the quality of feedback and
lessons learned from three main changes: Revising assignments and rubrics,
reorganising the teaching staff and increasing training of teaching assistants.
In discussing the changes, we draw on a survey to students with 142
respondents, a survey to teaching assistants with 18 respondents, meeting
minutes from a student reference group and experience reports from teaching
assistants as well as literature and own experience. The article concludes with
three actionable lessons learned for large-scale semi-capstone courses.
