Cohort-Based Supplemental Instruction Sessions as a Holistic Retention Approach in a First-Year Engineering Course

Nisha Abraham; Nina Kamath Telang

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Conference: 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
Location: Virtual Conference
Publication Date: July 26, 2021
Start Date: July 26, 2021
End Date: July 19, 2022
Conference Session: First-Year Programs: Recruiting and Retention
Tagged Division: First-Year Programs
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 26
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--36803
Permanent URL: https://strategy.asee.org/36803
Download Count: 359

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Paper Authors

biography

Nisha Abraham University of Texas at Austin

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Nisha coordinates the Supplemental Instruction program. She received her B.S. in cell and molecular biology from The University of Texas at Austin in 2007, her M.S. in biology from Texas A&M University in 2012 and her M.A. in STEM Education from The University of Texas at Austin in 2019. Additionally, she has over five years of combined industry and science research experience, has worked as a senior bioscience associate at UT’s Austin Technology Incubator, and has served as an adjunct faculty member in biology for South University.

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biography

Nina Kamath Telang University of Texas at Austin

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Nina Telang is a senior lecturer in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. She received the B.Tech degree in Engineering Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai in 1989, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 1992 and 1995 respectively. Her teaching interests are in the area of circuits and devices, computing, and logic design. Dr. Telang works closely with success programs for freshman engineering students.

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Abstract

This research paper examines the quantitative and qualitative impact of intentionally creating small, registration-based cohorts to regularly attend Supplemental Instruction (SI) sessions, implemented at our university in a first year engineering course in fall 2020. The SI program is an academic support program created in 1973 at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, to improve grades in traditionally “difficult” classes, promote student retention and increase graduation rates. The historically successful and evidence-based SI program was introduced at this university in 2015 through a collaboration between the School of Engineering and the campus Learning Center. The supported courses include freshman level introductory courses to Electrical Engineering and Computing. These are required courses for the Electrical and Computer engineering students at the university, and report high percentages of D’s, F’s, Q’s (drops), and W’s (withdraws). To improve academic success, traditional SI programs provide voluntary, non-remedial weekly sessions designed to combine application of difficult content via opportunities for additional practice and collaborative activities that require active engagement of students and use of transferable study effectiveness skills. The SI model was built upon theories including the social interdependence and mediation of learning (Congos, 2002; Dawson, 2014) and implicitly incorporate these practices. The program utilizes a peer-assisted learning model where SI leaders (undergraduates who have completed the course successfully) are selected and trained to plan and lead sessions each week, facilitating collaboration and developing interpersonal skills, teamwork and a sense of community and belonging. An important component of SI has always been the voluntary nature of the sessions. SI is explicitly associated with historically difficult courses rather than an association with specific student populations, which theoretically reduces the perceived stigma some students may experience using academic support. As sessions are voluntary and open to all students in the course, sessions are attended by a variety of students, theoretically decreasing the potential deficit perspective that can be associated with other targeted support programs while also giving students autonomy and control of their own learning. A review of literature on student retention in higher education (Demetriou and Schmitz-Sciborski, 2011) established that holistic approaches addressing students’ formal and informal experiences inside and outside of the classroom, taken up by multiple members of the campus community from across departments would have the most impact to retention rates. It firmly put the responsibility of student retention on the institution and recommended achievement of higher retention could be accomplished by offering easily accessible academic, personal and social support services. They found that interactions students have with faculty, staff, and peers can directly influence undergraduate retention, and the mechanism of action of this direct influence is that it affects students’ sense of connection to the university, their ability to navigate the college experience and meet academic expectations. We acknowledge that the SI program could achieve this type of influence, but that intentional planning and action had to be taken to create and enact these holistic approaches. In this unprecedented semester of online instruction, students potentially being removed from the learning and community environment of the university, as well as additional external stressors of our country and the globe, the research collaborators were most concerned about students’ well-being, motivation, ability to manage these stressors and overall academic and personal success. While the SI model values components such as voluntary attendance, research has shown that regular attendance (i.e. students attending eight sessions or more) has the highest impact to grade outcomes, retention and graduation rates, as well as students’ sense of connection, belonging and positive experience in their first year. The researchers questioned whether a balance could be struck between requiring regular attendance to SI sessions, while still maintaining student autonomy and positive perceptions of SI as academic support for all. This report investigates the potential quantitative and qualitative impact of creating a registration-based SI program that encouraged students in this first year engineering course to sign-up for one SI session and to attend this session each week, while limiting the “enrollment” in each session to 12 students. In this way, the collaborators and SI Leaders were able to develop a cohesive community within each cohort, conduct community-building activities within sessions and track student attendance. This allowed for a more holistic approach to faculty-student and Leader-student interactions, both inside and outside the sessions. Examples of such community-building activities and holistic interactions will be presented in our paper. The study will utilize a mixed-methods approach, incorporating quantitative data relating to grades and SI session attendance, with qualitative data relating to student perceptions of the cohort-based model of SI sessions. The collaborators will use students’ SI session attendance, students’ demographic data, the D’s, F’s, W’s and Q drop rates (QDFW rates) and end of semester course grades for attendees and non-attendees. Qualitative data will be collected in the form of surveys administered to SI session attendees in fall 2020 and small group/one-on-one interviews with attendees about their experiences in SI sessions. As the SI program’s effectiveness is assessed by aiming to reduce the QDFW rates in first year engineering courses and in turn retain more students to the ECE program, we plan to provide an in-depth analysis of how the SI program affects specific demographics, as well as compare students outcomes using previous experience in the subject matter as a proxy for preparedness, for a more accurate reflection of the effects of SI.

Citation
Format

Abraham, N., & Telang, N. K. (2021, July), Cohort-Based Supplemental Instruction Sessions as a Holistic Retention Approach in a First-Year Engineering Course Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--36803

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This research paper examines the quantitative and qualitative impact of intentionally creating small, registration-based cohorts to regularly attend Supplemental Instruction (SI) sessions, implemented at our university in a first year engineering course in fall 2020. The SI program is an academic support program created in 1973 at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, to improve grades in traditionally “difficult” classes, promote student retention and increase graduation rates. The historically successful and evidence-based SI program was introduced at this university in 2015 through a collaboration between the School of Engineering and the campus Learning Center. The supported courses include freshman level introductory courses to Electrical Engineering and Computing. These are required courses for the Electrical and Computer engineering students at the university, and report high percentages of D’s, F’s, Q’s (drops), and W’s (withdraws).
To improve academic success, traditional SI programs provide voluntary, non-remedial weekly sessions designed to combine application of difficult content via opportunities for additional practice and collaborative activities that require active engagement of students and use of transferable study effectiveness skills. The SI model was built upon theories including the social interdependence and mediation of learning (Congos, 2002; Dawson, 2014) and implicitly incorporate these practices. The program utilizes a peer-assisted learning model where SI leaders (undergraduates who have completed the course successfully) are selected and trained to plan and lead sessions each week, facilitating collaboration and developing interpersonal skills, teamwork and a sense of community and belonging.
	An important component of SI has always been the voluntary nature of the sessions. SI is explicitly associated with historically difficult courses rather than an association with specific student populations, which theoretically reduces the perceived stigma some students may experience using academic support. As sessions are voluntary and open to all students in the course, sessions are attended by a variety of students, theoretically decreasing the potential deficit perspective that can be associated with other targeted support programs while also giving students autonomy and control of their own learning. 
A review of literature on student retention in higher education (Demetriou and Schmitz-Sciborski, 2011) established that holistic approaches addressing students’ formal and informal experiences inside and outside of the classroom, taken up by multiple members of the campus community from across departments would have the most impact to retention rates. It firmly put the responsibility of student retention on the institution and recommended achievement of higher retention could be accomplished by offering easily accessible academic, personal and social support services. They found that interactions students have with faculty, staff, and peers can directly influence undergraduate retention, and the mechanism of action of this direct influence is that it affects students’ sense of connection to the university, their ability to navigate the college experience and meet academic expectations. We acknowledge that the SI program could achieve this type of influence, but that intentional planning and action had to be taken to create and enact these holistic approaches. 
In this unprecedented semester of online instruction, students potentially being removed from the learning and community environment of the university, as well as additional external stressors of our country and the globe, the research collaborators were most concerned about students’ well-being, motivation, ability to manage these stressors and overall academic and personal success. While the SI model values components such as voluntary attendance, research has shown that regular attendance (i.e. students attending eight sessions or more) has the highest impact to grade outcomes, retention and graduation rates, as well as students’ sense of connection, belonging and positive experience in their first year. The researchers questioned whether a balance could be struck between requiring regular attendance to SI sessions, while still maintaining student autonomy and positive perceptions of SI as academic support for all. 
	This report investigates the potential quantitative and qualitative impact of creating a registration-based SI program that encouraged students in this first year engineering course to sign-up for one SI session and to attend this session each week, while limiting the “enrollment” in each session to 12 students. In this way, the collaborators and SI Leaders were able to develop a cohesive community within each cohort, conduct community-building activities within sessions and track student attendance. This allowed for a more holistic approach to faculty-student and Leader-student interactions, both inside and outside the sessions. Examples of such community-building activities and holistic interactions will be presented in our paper.    
The study will utilize a mixed-methods approach, incorporating quantitative data relating to grades and SI session attendance, with qualitative data relating to student perceptions of the cohort-based model of SI sessions. The collaborators will use students’ SI session attendance, students’ demographic data, the D’s, F’s, W’s and Q drop rates (QDFW rates) and end of semester course grades for attendees and non-attendees. Qualitative data will be collected in the form of surveys administered to SI session attendees in fall 2020 and small group/one-on-one interviews with attendees about their experiences in SI sessions. As the SI program’s effectiveness is assessed by aiming to reduce the QDFW rates in first year engineering courses and in turn retain more students to the ECE program, we plan to provide an in-depth analysis of how the SI program affects specific demographics, as well as compare students outcomes using previous experience in the subject matter as a proxy for preparedness, for a more accurate reflection of the effects of SI.

AU  - Nisha Abraham
AU  - Nina Kamath Telang
CY  - Virtual Conference
DA  - 2021/07/26
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Cohort-Based Supplemental Instruction Sessions as a Holistic Retention Approach in a First-Year Engineering Course
UR  - https://strategy.asee.org/36803
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--36803
ER  -