Assessing the impact of peer mentoring on performance in a fundamentals of engineering course

Abstract

This Work in Progress Paper will assess the impact of peer mentoring on the performance of students in Fundamentals of Engineering course. First Year Experience Programs are designed to build the foundation for incoming freshmen students at college level. Fundamentals of Engineering courses offered as part of these programs teach required problem solving and technical skills and forms the basis for admission into engineering majors. Students often find these courses to be challenging and overwhelming. Many students experience difficulty in transitioning from high school to college because the goals and expectations vary significantly. Although several learning pedagogies such as active learning, flipped classroom and interactive discussion groups have been implemented by instructors to make student's experience more rewarding and impactful, there is still a need to explore strategies to further enhance students' performance and overall success. The goal of this study is to address the research question: Will providing peer mentoring sessions help improve the performance in Fundamentals of Engineering course offered at a regional campus? The concepts covered in the course integrate the scientific principles and mathematical problem solving with practical applications utilizing engineering tools. Data analysis in Excel, application based programming in MATLAB and software design project are three main components of the course. Although most of the application assignments encourage teamwork, students find it difficult to learn and implement the functionality of tools and lack confidence in accomplishing the tasks in a timely manner. The rationale behind peer mentoring approach is to provide support and a medium for students to interact with peers who have successfully completed the coursework. It also helps students learn from other's experiences to avoid possible mistakes, thereby developing a sense of confidence and motivation. In this paper, we describe peer mentoring learning strategy to assess the performance of students in Fundamentals of Engineering course at a regional campus. The peer mentoring sessions are offered by the STEM enrichment center where the students are paired with the mentors. The study is being conducted during autumn and spring semesters and it is a work in progress.