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established. The seven high school students that qualified were enrolled in a section of College Algebra with 19 other regular college students, as well as the Introduction to Engineering course. The remaining 13 students were enrolled in the same Introduction to Engineering course and also participated in supervised learning activities in the Basic Skills Enrichment Program (BSEP). The Introduction to Engineering course also included 10 regular college students. This fragmentation of the learning community made it impossible to attain the desired level of cohesion during the afternoon study sessions. Another problem encountered was in finding and hiring a sufficient number of qualified SS1 leaders. Although these deviations in the implementation of the original program design seem likely to have made an adverse impact on the level of student achievement that we thought was possible, we were nevertheless encouraged by the final results. The distributions of final grades in each of the two courses are displayed in Tables 1 and 2.

All twenty EDGE students received a productive grade and college credit for the Introduction to Engineering course, and their performance was commensurate with their college level classmates. It was noted by the instructor (Dimitriu), that the interaction between the high school and college students seemed to have a positive effect on both groups.

Table 1: Final Grades posted for Introduction to Engineering

A B C D F W total 13 5 2 0 0 0 20 65% 25% 10% 0% 0% 0% EDGE Rates

18 9 3 0 0 0 30 60% 30% 10% 0% 0% 0% Course Rates

Three of the seven EDGE students enrolled in College Algebra received productive grades and three withdrew. Although the withdrawal of these students was a disappointment, the withdrawal rate for the EDGE group was considerably lower than it was for the entire class (43% vs. 58%). The productive grade rate (PGR) for the EDGE students was also 43%, which again compares favorably with the PGR of 35% for the entire class.

Table 2: Final Grades posted for College Algebra

A B C D F W total 2 1 0 1 0 3 7 29% 14% 0% 14% 0% 43% EDGE Rates

4 3 2 2 0 15 26 15% 12% 8% 8% 0% 58% Course Rates

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

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O'Connor, J., & Dimitriu, D. (2004, June), Getting An Edge In Engineering Education Paper presented at 2004 Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--12881