Research Initiation: Peer-led, Student Instructed, Study Groups: A Formation of Engineers Framework for Understanding Self-Efficacy and Persistence in Transfer Students

The 2012 President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology report advocated for one million new STEM graduates in the next decade and noted that increasing the retention of STEM majors to just fifty percent alone would generate approximately three-quarters of the targeted one million additional STEM degrees needed to maintain our nation’s economic competitiveness. Transfer students, who are disproportionately first-generation college students and students of color, are a target population for boosting engineering retention.

Transfer students matriculate into their new universities and commonly experience transfer shock while taking gateway courses, often with limited social support. Low achievement and poor experiences in these early courses can result in transfer students leaving engineering all together. The project team proposes to research the effects of a PEER-led, Student Instructed, STudy group (PEERSIST) model in thermodynamics to promote student achievement, engineering self-efficacy, and identity formation, all of which are variables linked to engineering persistence.

This study is led by a PI that has limited experience in the field of social science and engineering formation research, with mentorship from a team of experienced engineering education researchers.

The PEERSIST model promotes academic competence through peer dialogue, in which disciplinary knowledge is socially co-constructed and refined over successive sessions. The project will explore four primary research questions: 1) To what extent does peer and near-peer support in a gateway course promote engineering students’ self-efficacy and identity formation?; 2) Do these effects, if any, accrue differently between transfer and first-time full-time students?; 3) To what extent does peer and near-peer support in a gateway course promote student course achievement and engineering persistence?; 4) Do these effects, if any, accrue differently between transfer and first-time full-time students?

The study is grounded in social cognitive career theory (SCCT), which researchers have used extensively to understand student persistence in the pursuit of engineering degrees. This work will extend research into social-cognitive factors that influence STEM retention and persistence by operationalizing social-cognitive variables in an applied setting to promote engineering persistence.

While prior research documents relationships between these variables, few studies have conducted quasi-experimental research that uses social-cognitive theory to cause STEM persistence, nor do such studies include one-year follow-up data. This quasi-experimental study will use a sequential explanatory quantitative to qualitative mixed-methods design in year 1 followed by a convergent quantitative and qualitative mixed-methods design in year 2.

Course progress, survey measures, and interviews will be collected on students in the peer-led study groups and a comparison group that receives conventional recitation pedagogy. Dependent variables are cognitive (test grades) and social (engineering identity and self-efficacy). In the second year of the project, follow-up interviews and institutional data will be collected from the same students to assess persistence in engineering and the institution.

Study results will have strong implications for research into student retention and persistence, particularly among transfer students. The one-year follow-up component provides a rare opportunity to identify the effects of social-cognitive factors on engineering persistence.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.