Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Session 3549

Comparison of Supplemental Instruction Strategies and Results for On-Campus and Distance Education Students Raed M. AbouFakher, Deborah Sharer University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Abstract

Supplementary Instruction (SI) is a proven tool to help undergraduate students succeed in traditionally difficult academic courses. SI involves scheduled group study sessions with direct peer-to-peer interaction between students and the SI leader. The SI strategy has proven its efficacy throughout a wide range of U.S universities that have embraced such a program. SI is offered at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) for several courses in a variety of programs, including the Electrical Engineering Technology (ELET) program. Since the ELET program also offers an IADE (Individual Access Distance Education) option for degree completion, online sections for on-campus courses are required. It is therefore necessary to have SI sessions available for the on-campus students as well as eSI (electronic SI) sessions for the IADE students.

For most ELET courses, WebCT is utilized as an asynchronous means of interaction between the instructor and students for both on-campus and IADE sections. The difference in interaction arises in the way supplemental instruction is designed and conducted, especially for the online courses, where traditional group study SI sessions are impossible. This limitation of the IADE offering necessitated the use of an alternate tool to provide IADE students the opportunity for synchronous interaction with the SI leader. CentraOne, an open architecture Web platform for knowledge delivery, is used in eSI to provide the desired peer-to-peer sessions and allow IADE students to directly interact with the SI leader. The recording and publishing capabilities of CentraOne are also used to provide unlimited asynchronous access of sessions to students in all sections.

A discussion of the difference between conducting conventional SI sessions and eSI sessions for the Active Networks I offering in the ELET program is the emphasis of this paper. In addition, the efficacy and the advantages of both SI and eSI will be discussed and analyzed through the qualitative and quantitative experiences of a SI leader in the ET department who conducted such sessions for technical courses.

Introduction

The Engineering Technology program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) was originally designed as a 2+2 program, which means that students complete their first two years at a community college. After receiving an Associate in Applied Sciences (AAS) degree in a relevant field, they complete their upper division requirements at UNC Charlotte and

Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Education

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Abou Fakher, R., & Sharer, D. (2004, June), Comparison Of Supplemental Instruction Strategies And Results For On Campus And Distance Education Students Paper presented at 2004 Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--12781