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Academic bridge courses are implemented to impact students’ academic success by revising fundamental concepts and skills necessary to successfully complete discipline-specific courses. The bridge courses are often short (one to three weeks) and highly dense in content (commonly mathematics or math-related applications). With the support of the NSF-funded (DUE - Division of Undergraduate Education) STEM Center at Sam Houston State University (SHSU), we designed a course for upcoming engineering majors (i.e., first-year students and transfer students) that consists of a two-week-long pre-semester course organized into two main sessions. The first sessions (delivered in the mornings) were synchronous activities focused on strengthening student academic preparedness and socio-academic integration and fostering networking leading to a strong STEM learning community. The second sessions (delivered in the afternoons) were asynchronous activities focused on discipline-specific content knowledge in engineering. The engineering concepts were organized via eight learning modules covering basic math operations, applied trigonometry, functions in engineering, applied physics, introduction to statics and Microsoft Excel, and engineering economics and its applied decision. All materials in the course were designed by engineering faculty (from the chair of the department to assistant professors and lecturers in engineering) and one educational research faculty (from the department of chemistry). The course design process started with a literature review on engineering bridge courses to understand prior work, followed by surveying current engineering faculty to propose goals for the course. The designed team met weekly after setting the course goals over two semesters. The design process was initiated with backward design principles (i.e., start with the course goals, then the assessments, end with the learning activities) and continued with ongoing revision. The work herein presents this new engineering bridge course’s goals, strategy, and design process. Preliminary student outcomes will be discussed based on the course’s first implementation during summer 2021.
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Creating Opportunities to Help Students Be Prepared for Careers in a STEM Field
This presentation reports on an ongoing National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) funded project in the Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP). The goals of the project include increasing the number of students graduating with a major, minor, or Master’s degree in mathematics; strengthening the academic culture in the department; and strengthening the relationships within the broader STEM community within and beyond the university. The project aims to achieve these goals by providing financial assistance to students in need to pursue their degree and developing a series of activities each semester designed to strengthen relationships within the academic and STEM communities. Ways in which the goals of the project are being met will be shared including: recruiting strategies used to get students into the program; offering of activities in the form of presentations and workshops to help students prepare for careers the STEM industry; peer-led tutoring sessions to help with academic success in mathematics classes, and monthly meetings in which participants present original research. Data collected from student surveys at the end of each semester will be reported. Finally, the impact of transitioning to online learning as a result of COVID-19 in the middle of a semester on a project that focuses on community development will be shared. In addition, to students’ responses to online learning data collected from faculty teaching in STEM disciplines will also be shared. The following sources of information were used for this presentation; quantitative and qualitative data gathered from End of Semester surveys, student reflection narratives concerning their small group activities, and reports that summarizes and evaluates the peer-led team learning sessions.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1742304
- PAR ID:
- 10313611
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--36874
