scholarly journals The Use Of Peer Tutoring To Improve The Passing Rates In Mathematics Placement Exams Of Engineering Students: A Success Story

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rolando García ◽  
Juan C. Morales ◽  
Gloribel Rivera

This paper describes a highly successful peer tutoring program that has resulted in an improvement in the passing rates of mathematics placement exams from 16% to 42%, on average. Statistical analyses were conducted using a Chi-Squared (X2) test for independence and the results were statistically significant (p-value much less than 0.05). These encouraging results suggest that this type of initiative should be institutionalized at the end of the grant period that funds it. The paper describes the structure of the program, the conditions of the university in which it is being implemented, the details of the statistical analyses, and its impact in engineering education. This model may easily be replicated in academic institutions with similar conditions. 

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (11) ◽  
pp. 2190-2202 ◽  
Author(s):  
José L. Arco-Tirado ◽  
Francisco D. Fernández-Martín ◽  
Miriam Hervás-Torres

Author(s):  
Jean Brousseau ◽  
Andrée Sano-Gélinas

In undergraduate engineering programs, design competency is mainly developed through project-based design courses. In such courses, a well framed practice is one of the best strategy to help students develop the ability to design solutions to complex, multifaceted and open-ended engineering problems. Nevertheless, supervising students, especially first-year students, requires a lot of effort and time. As the number of students increases, the task of closely supervising them becomes more difficult. Considering the small number of academic staff, peer tutors can provide a solution to the lack of resources. In addition to this, peer-tutoring is a very interesting pedagogical solution. In fact, the literature demonstrates that peer tutoring can benefit both students and tutors.Teaching assistants (TAs) have contributed in project based courses for a long time but there are not so many documented experiences about how to integrate peer-tutoring in a project-based design course or how to use fourth year students to tutor first year students.In fall 2017, a peer-tutoring program (PTP) has been implemented in the first year multidisciplinary design course. Fourth-year engineering students with relevant design experience acted as tutors for teams of four or five students. The intention was to reduce the pressure on our professional staff, while maintaining the same quality level of supervision.PTP assessment revealed that all stakeholders appreciated the experience. At low cost, it allowed more weekly hours of supervision and gave the professionals the possibility to perform tasks that only them can do. Although the impact of PTP on the quality of learning was not measured, the student level of satisfaction was very high.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chinweike Eseonu ◽  
Martin A Cortes

There is a culture of disengagement from social consideration in engineering disciplines. This means that first year engineering students, who arrive planning to change the world through engineering, lose this passion as they progress through the engineering curriculum. The community driven technology innovation and investment program described in this paper is an attempt to reverse this trend by fusing community engagement with the normal engineering design process. This approach differs from existing project or trip based approaches – outreach – because the focus is on local communities with which the university team forms a long-term partnership through weekly in-person meetings and community driven problem statements – engagement.


Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 662
Author(s):  
María Jesús Santos ◽  
Alejandro Medina ◽  
José Miguel Mateos Roco ◽  
Araceli Queiruga-Dios

Sophomore students from the Chemical Engineering undergraduate Degree at the University of Salamanca are involved in a Mathematics course during the third semester and in an Engineering Thermodynamics course during the fourth one. When they participate in the latter they are already familiar with mathematical software and mathematical concepts about numerical methods, including non-linear equations, interpolation or differential equations. We have focused this study on the way engineering students learn Mathematics and Engineering Thermodynamics. As students use to learn each matter separately and do not associate Mathematics and Physics, they separate each matter into different and independent compartments. We have proposed an experience to increase the interrelationship between different subjects, to promote transversal skills, and to make the subjects closer to real work. The satisfactory results of the experience are exposed in this work. Moreover, we have analyzed the results obtained in both courses during the academic year 2018–2019. We found that there is a relation between both courses and student’s final marks do not depend on the course.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 56
Author(s):  
Saray Busto ◽  
Michael Dumbser ◽  
Elena Gaburro

In this article we present a case study concerning a simple but efficient technical and logistic concept for the realization of blended teaching of mathematics and its applications in theoretical mechanics that was conceived, tested and implemented at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering (DICAM) of the University of Trento, Italy, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The concept foresees traditional blackboard lectures with a reduced number of students physically present in the lecture hall, while the same lectures are simultaneously made available to the remaining students, who cannot be present, via high-quality low-bandwidth online streaming. The case study presented in this paper was implemented in a single University Department and was carried out with a total of n=1011 students and n=68 professors participating in the study. Based on our first key assumption that traditional blackboard lectures, including the gestures and the facial expressions of the professor, are even nowadays still a very efficient and highly appreciated means of teaching mathematics at the university, this paper deliberately does not want to propose a novel pedagogical concept of how to teach mathematics at the undergraduate level, but rather presents a technical concept of how to preserve the quality of traditional blackboard lectures even during the COVID-19 pandemic and how to make them available to the students at home via online streaming with adequate audio and video quality even at low internet bandwidth. The second key assumption of this paper is that the teaching of mathematics is a dynamic creative process that requires the physical presence of students in the lecture hall as audience so that the professor can instantaneously fine-tune the evolution of the lecture according to his/her perception of the level of attention and the facial expressions of the students. The third key assumption of this paper is that students need to have the possibility to interact with each other personally, especially in the first years at the university. We report on the necessary hardware, software and logistics, as well as on the perception of the proposed blended lectures by undergraduate students from civil and environmental engineering at the University of Trento, Italy, compared to traditional lectures and also compared to the pure online lectures that were needed as emergency measure at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The evaluation of the concept was carried out with the aid of quantitative internet bandwidth measurements, direct comparison of transmitted video signals and a careful analysis of ex ante and ex post online questionnaires sent to students and professors.


Author(s):  
A Gonzalez-Buelga ◽  
I Renaud-Assemat ◽  
B Selwyn ◽  
J Ross ◽  
I Lazar

This paper focuses on the development, delivery and preliminary impact analysis of an engineering Work Experience Week (WEW) programme for KS4 students in the School of Civil, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering (CAME) at the University of Bristol, UK. Key stage 4, is the legal term for the two years of school education which incorporate GCSEs in England, age 15–16. The programme aims to promote the engineering profession among secondary school pupils. During the WEW, participants worked as engineering researchers: working in teams, they had to tackle a challenging engineering design problem. The experience included hands-on activities and the use of state-of-the-art rapid prototyping and advanced testing equipment. The students were supervised by a group of team leaders, a diverse group of undergraduate and postgraduate engineering students, technical staff, and academics at the School of CAME. The vision of the WEW programme is to transmit the message that everybody can be an engineer, that there are plenty of different routes into engineering that can be taken depending on pupils’ strengths and interests and that there are a vast amount of different engineering careers and challenges to be tackled by the engineers of the future. Feedback from the participants in the scheme has been overwhelmingly positive.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (6_suppl) ◽  
pp. 37-37
Author(s):  
Daniel Kwon ◽  
Rohit Vashisht ◽  
Hala Borno ◽  
Rahul Raj Aggarwal ◽  
Eric Jay Small ◽  
...  

37 Background: SARS-CoV-2 entry into host cells is facilitated by the transmembrane protease TMPRSS2. TMPRSS2 expression can be modulated by the androgen receptor. It is unclear whether androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) may partially protect from SARS-CoV-2 infection. Methods: A retrospective registry study of adult men with prostate cancer who underwent testing for SARS-CoV-2 in the UC Health System between February 1, 2020 and October 6, 2020 was performed. The University of California Health COVID Research Data Set (UC CORDS), which includes electronic health data of all patients who underwent testing for SARS-CoV-2 at 5 UC academic medical centers (UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Los Angeles, UC San Diego, and UC San Francisco) and 12 affiliated hospitals across California, was used. Association of SARS-CoV-2 infection and receipt of ADT (GnRH agonist or antagonist) within 90 days of COVID testing was determined using the Chi-Squared test. Analyses (Chi-Squared or Fisher’s exact tests) were also performed in race/ethnicity subgroups. Results: Overall, 2,948 men with prostate cancer who underwent SARS-CoV-2 testing were identified, of whom 59 (2.0%) tested positive. Of the 2,948 men, 2,124 (72%) were White; 219 (7%) Black or African-American; 182 (6%) Asian or Native Hawaiian/Pacific-Islander; 176 (6%) Other race; and 247 (8%) Unknown race. There were 235 (8%) Hispanic or Latino men. Among the 444 men who received ADT in the entire cohort, 7 (1.6%) tested positive, and among the 2,504 men who did not receive ADT, 52 (2.1%) tested positive (OR 0.76, 95% CI 0.34-1.67, P = 0.49). No statistically significant association between ADT and SARS-CoV-2 positivity was found within race or ethnicity subgroups. Conclusions: No association between the use of ADT and the risk of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 was identified in this study of a diverse patient population in the University of California Health System medical centers and hospitals. In this setting of an overall low prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection, thus far, there is no strong evidence of a protective benefit of ADT.


Stroke ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (Suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne N Dula ◽  
Ian M Alrahwan ◽  
Steven J Warach

Introduction: The overall goal of this study is to evaluate the relationship of pretreatment perfusion mismatch volumes to outcomes in patients receiving alteplase (ALT) to those receiving tenecteplase (TNK). Methods: This study included patients receiving treatment with ALT (0.9 mg/kg; max, 90 mg) or TNK (0.25 mg/kg; max, 25 mg) between 09/01/2017 - 06/30/2020 identified through our local stroke registry stroke registry. Of the 505 patients meeting these criteria, 280 have been screened, including patients receiving EVT (n=94) and a sampling of n=111 from the ALT group and 75 from the TNK group. Final eligibility will be patients with a pretreatment perfusion deficit, mismatch > 15 mL, and mismatch (MM) ratio ≥ 1.2. Volumes are based on RAPID software (iSchemiaView). Using univariate (chi-squared with continuity correction or Mann-Whitney U) and adjusted logistic models, the effect of lysis type and pre-treatment imaging were assessed on the primary outcome of discharge disposition. Results: A total of 93 patients were included in our analysis, 40 receiving ALT and 53 patients receiving TNK, demographics found in Table 1. Discharge to home occurred in 48.8% (20/40) of patients treated with ALT and 30.7% (16/53) treated with TNK, odds ratio (OR), 0.47; 95% CI [0.20, 1.09], (P-value for OR=0.0766). Upon adjustment for EVT, age, sex, NIHSS on admission, imaging modality, cohort imbalances (marked by *), and MM, the relation of lysis type to discharge to home gave an OR of 0.25; 95% CI [0.06, 0.90], P= 0.0383) with age (P<0.0001) and imaging modality (P=0.0020) significantly contributing to the model. Lysis type did not significantly influence discharge to hospice or death (OR, 0.62; 95% CI [0.05, 6.86], P=0.6945) upon adjustment for baseline factors. Conclusion: In this preliminary analysis, MM volumes did not contribute to the outcome of discharged to home. Analysis of the full cohort is ongoing and final analyses will relate lytic type to infarct volume growth and clinical outcomes.


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