MEASURING THE IMPACT OF STUDENT LED TUTORIALS ON FIRST YEAR STUDENTS' LEARNING OUTCOMES
ENGR 141: Engineering Mechanics is afoundational course in the UVic Engineering Faculty thatserves all of the engineering degree programs:biomedical, civil, mechanical, electrical, computer andsoftware. Between the 2013 and 2014 offerings of thecourse, the ENGR 141 population grew dramatically, bywell over 50%, necessitating changes in the coursestructure and methods of student assessment. In additionto addressing logistical challenges, the changes weredesigned to develop the students’ confidence in theirability to wield fundamental mechanical principlesindependently and in peer-to-peer working environments.This was done by repurposing the tutorial sections of thecourse to create student driven exploration, analysis andsolution of complex three dimensional mechanicsproblems.A series of 22 problems lying outside the domain of theassignment problem sets were addressed-two in eachweek of the tutorials. The assignments and midtermsproblems were constructed so that the impact of tutorialwork on students mastery of the course Intended LearningOutcomes could be extracted.Under the new tutorial format, instructors monitoredgroup dynamics, helped troubleshoot and providedencouragement. Presentation of solution strategies weremade by select student groups each week. The currentwork describes the motivation for the changes made,observations made at implementation and somepreliminary results from analyses of the impact of the newcourse structure on student mastery of the course learningoutcomes. Important conclusions are that the student-ledtutorials should be accompanied with additionalinstructor contact hours that provide opportunity forstudents to receive tutelage on a one-to-one basis andthat individual testing should stress the procedures andtools emphasized in the tutorials.In addition, students found that assessments madethrough multiple choice testing contradicted values andprinciples being stressed in the tutorial and seminarsessions.