Developing Engineering Students’ Self-Regulation through a Discipline Specific Student Success Course Rachel McCord Lecturer The University of Tennessee Engineering Fundamentals Program Keywords: Student Success, Self- Regulation

Why? A major difficulty for engineering students in their transition from high school to college is lack of student success skills: – Time Management – Study Skills – Finding Resources for Help Few engineering educators spend class time teaching students academic and student success skills My objective is to help students to develop student success skills by teaching self-regulated learning (SRL) skills Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) Cognitive Regulation Metacognitive Regulation Motivational/ Behavioral Regulation

When? UTK has offered First Year Studies across campus for over 15 years, but this course has been underutilized by engineering students on the campus After attending Dr. Ray Landis’s short course on Studying Engineering in January 2015, I pursued starting an FYS 101 course specific to engineering students that focuses on teaching SRL skills The FYS 101 for Engineering Students began in Fall 2015

Where? This will be the first attempt at teaching a FYS 101 course dedicated to engineering students at UTK, though a FYS 101 curriculum is taught in multiple departments around the campus Currently, my project is implemented as a single section of FYS 101. I have 17 engineering students enrolled in the course. The future plan would be to increase the size of offering for the course. Currently, the first-year engineering program at UTK has ~750 students entering each fall

What? TopicsLearning Objectives/Activities Keys to Success Identify Habits and Behaviors of Successful/Unsuccessful Students How People Learn Describe personal learning style and how to compensate for differing teaching styles; describe metacognitive skills and how to build/utilize these skills Making the Most of How You Are Taught Develop a plan for managing time (class, work, personal); Use exam wrapper to identify category of mistakes to work on for next exam Making the Learning Process Work For You Develop written descriptions of processes for solving problems to better understand solutions Engineering Disciplines/Career Development Identify majors of interest; attend a department fair and ask questions of representatives from departments of interest; learning about opportunities for co-ops and internships Uses of Academic Advising Identify purpose of academic advising and resources necessary for effective advising appointments Diversity in Engineering Under development… Campus Involvement/Student Societies Under development… Academic Integrity Under development… Stress Management Under development…

Prognosis? Recording Impact: – Self Regulated Learning – Responses to Motivated Strategies of Learning Questionnaire (Pre and Post) and responses to reflective journaling – First Year Engineering Course Performance compared to entire class Scale-Up: This is a current challenge I have, as scaling up to accommodate more students requires significant faculty resources or a reorganization of the course to accommodate more students in a single section Challenges: – Scale-up: First year program at UTK has ~750 students who would be eligible for course – Encouraging students to think deeply on reflective assignments; providing meaningful feedback on reflection assignments What advice would you like from others at FOEE? – What are effective methods for scaling up a small course to a larger student population without losing personal interaction? – What are effective means of providing feedback to reflective exercises? Would peer assessments of reflective exercises be appropriate in this setting? – How do I motivate other faculty to join in the scale up process? – Are there aspects of the FYS course that could be implemented at the sophomore, junior level?