2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This works seeks to develop and assess a retention intervention that addresses the key drivers of attrition and learns from existing interventions for engineering students. The resulting intervention addresses key competencies for the major and profession, and also addresses a gap in current approaches: the need to synergistically support students’ social-cognitive disposition with respect to attrition by training them in social-cognitive skills and strategies adapted from the theories of Sense of Belonging (SOB) and Self-Regulation of Learning (SRL).

Because the degree of skills and strategies around SRL and SOB needed to make the largest impact to retention is unknown, four versions of the intervention are proposed: A base intervention which provokes students to think about their learning and belonging, an intervention augmented with specific training in effective SRL, an intervention augmented with specific training in SOB; and an intervention augmented with training in both effective SRL and SOB. An overarching research design plans the offering and assessment of each version of the intervention, including a numerical longitudinal analysis of retention at the end of the study, with the ultimate goal of identifying which version of the intervention has the largest positive impact to retention and other key metrics.

After a general description of the intervention as a while, the focus was reoriented to the base version of the intervention. The detailed design was presented along with the assessment methods for short-term effectiveness and the preliminary results for its first offering in Fall 2022. Overall, students found the topics covered in the intervention to be helpful and used many of the skills and strategies from the intervention in other major courses. The impact of the intervention on performance in major courses taken alongside the intervention and their persistence rate in the major for another semester improved significantly for one major course but were inconclusive for a second major course. Recommendations were made to refine the materials provided to students and several of the activities in the base intervention; and the formative assessment tool.