Technology-enabled, after-hours, asynchronous, peer-led supplementary instruction and mentoring in engineering gatekeeper courses

Experience and observations indicate that students often work on problem sets at hours outside those traditionally scheduled for office hours, tutoring, and supplemental instruction (SI). Moreover, their tendency is to focus their effort the night before the assignment is due. Add to this the complexity of a distributed university where students are taking engineering courses towards their degree at campuses distributed over 60+ miles. Moreover, a considerable number of University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) Engineering students transfer from neighboring two-year institutions with limited to no supplemental instruction (SI) support for Engineering courses due to the lack of access to upper division students with the expertise. These complexities (i.e. students' study habits, the regional distribution of UTRGV, and the underserved needs of its transfer students) necessitate rethinking the practice of supplemental instruction. In this paper, the authors review all the different modalities of supplementary instruction reported in the literature and make the case for a technology-enabled, real-time, after-hours, and asynchronous model. In this model we employ the use of web-enabled, collaboration tools to facilitate real-time tutoring, asynchronous supplemental instruction, and peer-mentoring on a regional scale to serve the needs of students at both primary campuses and neighboring two-year institutions. The paper also describes plans to implement and the proposed model and provides a preliminary comparative study of the impact of traditional supplemental instruction versus this alternative approach on student learning outcomes.