Work In Progress: Evolution of A Near-Peer Co-Instructional Model for A Large-Enrollment First-Year Engineering Course

Haritha Malladi; Joshua Enszer; Jenni Buckley

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Conference: 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Start Date: June 26, 2022
End Date: June 29, 2022
Conference Session: First-Year Programs Division Technical Session 12: Work-in-Progress Postcard Session #1
Page Count: 11
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--41459
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/41459
Download Count: 187

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Paper Authors

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Haritha Malladi University of Delaware

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Haritha Malladi is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Director of First-Year Engineering at the University of Delaware. She received her Bachelor of Technology degree in Civil Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Warangal, India, and her MS and PhD in Civil Engineering from North Carolina State University. She is a teacher-scholar working in the intersection of undergraduate engineering education, sustainable infrastructure, and community engagement. She teaches the introductory engineering course for all first-year undergraduate students in the College of Engineering at UD. Her undergraduate teaching experience includes foundational engineering mechanics courses like statics and strength of materials as well as courses related to sustainability and infrastructure. Her research interests are in foundational engineering education, sustainability in engineering curriculum, and green technologies in infrastructure.

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Joshua Enszer University of Delaware

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Joshua Enszer is an Associate Professor in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, having joined the department in 2015. He is an active member of the Chemical Engineering Division of the American Society for Engineering Education, and in 2020 completed his term as Past Chair of the division. His affiliations with the American Institute of Chemical Engineers include serving as faculty advisor for UD’s student chapter, as an academic consultant for AIChE’s Center for Chemical Process Safety, and as an executive board member for AIChE’s Delaware Valley Section. His research is in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and he has published on topics including modernizing the process control curriculum, implementation of gamification in course design, writing across the curriculum, and chemical process safety education. His most recent work is in developing rubrics to increase reliability when used by multiple raters, and in the development and improvement of alternative assessment methods to demonstrate student attainment of course learning outcomes.

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Jenni Buckley University of Delaware

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Jenni M. Buckley is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at University of Delaware (UD). She has over 10 years of engineering experience in medical device design and biomechanical evaluation and has research interests in human factors design, medical device development, and equity and inclusion issues in engineering education. She teaches a range of courses across the mechanical engineering curriculum, including CAD, mechanics, and capstone design; and she is the Co-Director of the UD Mechanical Engineering MakerSpace, The Design Studio. She is the Co-Founder and President of The Perry Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to diversifying the pipeline in engineering and medicine through hands-on learning.

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Abstract

This Work in Progress paper describes the evolution of using near-peer undergraduate teaching assistants in a large-enrollment introductory engineering course. Over the past six years, through stakeholder feedback and formative evaluation, we have developed and continually refined a large-enrollment (ca. 650 student) one-semester first-year experience (FYE) engineering course taught by one to two faculty members. This course features a mixture of interactive didactic content and two multi-week, open-ended design challenges. The success of this large-enrollment FYE course is predicated on instructional support from cadre of near-peer undergraduate teaching assistants, called peer leaders. The course employs approximately 30 peer leaders per year, with each peer leader assigned to 25 students (5 teams of 5 students). Although they have historically been used in more of an instructional support role, peer leaders have more recently been responsible for independently facilitating active learning discussion sessions. Near-peer mentors are essential to the success of this course by providing a small class feel in a large-enrollment class (1:25 peer leader-to-student ratio). As they are undergraduate students who have taken the course within the last four years, peer leaders are intimately familiar with the course content and have personal experience of working in an interdisciplinary team for this course. With the changing role of the peer leaders from instructional support in large lecture sessions towards leading discussion sessions, our group is working on bolstering the pedagogical training that the peer leaders receive. This paper will present a retrospective evaluation of student experiences with their peer leaders based on mid-semester feedback surveys and final course evaluations. It will also present the results of a survey of the present team of peer leaders to understand the perceived positive and negative aspects of their roles. These results will inform the direction of training for future cohorts of peer leaders. This paper provides a framework for other institutions looking to adopt a similar model.

Citation
Format

Malladi, H., & Enszer, J., & Buckley, J. (2022, August), Work In Progress: Evolution of A Near-Peer Co-Instructional Model for A Large-Enrollment First-Year Engineering Course Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41459

TY - CPAPER
AB - This Work in Progress paper describes the evolution of using near-peer undergraduate teaching assistants in a large-enrollment introductory engineering course. Over the past six years, through stakeholder feedback and formative evaluation, we have developed and continually refined a large-enrollment (ca. 650 student) one-semester first-year experience (FYE) engineering course taught by one to two faculty members. This course features a mixture of interactive didactic content and two multi-week, open-ended design challenges. The success of this large-enrollment FYE course is predicated on instructional support from cadre of near-peer undergraduate teaching assistants, called peer leaders. The course employs approximately 30 peer leaders per year, with each peer leader assigned to 25 students (5 teams of 5 students). Although they have historically been used in more of an instructional support role, peer leaders have more recently been responsible for independently facilitating active learning discussion sessions. Near-peer mentors are essential to the success of this course by providing a small class feel in a large-enrollment class (1:25 peer leader-to-student ratio). As they are undergraduate students who have taken the course within the last four years, peer leaders are intimately familiar with the course content and have personal experience of working in an interdisciplinary team for this course. With the changing role of the peer leaders from instructional support in large lecture sessions towards leading discussion sessions, our group is working on bolstering the pedagogical training that the peer leaders receive. This paper will present a retrospective evaluation of student experiences with their peer leaders based on mid-semester feedback surveys and final course evaluations. It will also present the results of a survey of the present team of peer leaders to understand the perceived positive and negative aspects of their roles. These results will inform the direction of training for future cohorts of peer leaders. This paper provides a framework for other institutions looking to adopt a similar model.
AU - Haritha Malladi
AU - Joshua Enszer
AU - Jenni Buckley
CY - Minneapolis, MN
DA - 2022/08/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Work In Progress: Evolution of A Near-Peer Co-Instructional Model for A Large-Enrollment First-Year Engineering Course
UR - https://peer.asee.org/41459
DO - 10.18260/1-2--41459
ER -