2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Interactions with Undergraduate Academic and Career Advisors in a Signals and Systems Base Course

Presented at Advancing Online and Hybrid Learning in Engineering Education

The goal of this project is to develop an understanding of how student engagement in a Signals and Systems base course in a large mid-Atlantic university can be improved through email interactions with Undergraduate Academic and Career Advisors who are advising the undergraduates who are taking the course. These interactions related to graded events may introduce the possibility to improve student performance and engagement in the course. The department supplied the template to use in corresponding with the academic advisors. The weekly interactions were offered by one instructor of the base course for six semesters from Spring 2021 to Fall 2023 (and we aim to continue in future semesters). As part of the teaching, starting in Spring 2022, the department asked the base course instructors to send emails to students who did not complete graded events using a template, and to copy each student’s undergraduate academic and career advisor on the emails. In this section, several hundred emails have been sent to date by the instructor. We aim to develop the course through these interactions with the students’ Advisors, and we present results of a comparison of the results in “Intervention groups” (Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, and Fall 2023) with the results in “Control groups” (Spring 2021 and Fall 2021 sections that did not receive the emails). Preliminary results in Spring 2024 semester show that class attendance remains high; 100% of the students took Exam 1; approximately 10-20 students attend weekly Friday recitation sessions, and approximately 5-20 students attend weekly MATLAB recitation sessions. A major finding of this study is that the interactions have helped improve student attendance and quiz completion in subsequent weeks (after a missed quiz or class).

Authors

Dr. Mary Yvonne Lanzerotti http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7802-1117 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

Dr. Lanzerotti is a Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. Previously she worked at the United States Military Academy (West Point, NY).
Dr. Scott Dunning P.E. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

Dr. Scott Dunning is Associate Department Head and Chief of Staff for the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. Prior to that, he served on faculty of the University of Maine where he was the academic dean for the School of Engineering Technology for his last thirteen years.
Prof. R. Michael Buehrer Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

Dr. R. Michael Buehrer joined Virginia Tech from Bell Labs as an Assistant Professor with the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2001. He is currently a Professor of Electrical Engineering and is the director of Wireless @ Virgi
Prof. Ahmad Safaai-Jazi Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Dr. Nektaria Tryfona Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

Dr. Nektaria Tryfona is a Collegiate Associate Professor at the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She received her B.Eng. and Ph.D in Computer Engineering and Informatics from the Polytechnic School, University of Patras, Greece.
She has extensive experience on building data management and database solutions for large-scale systems in collaboration with industrial and governmental agencies, and academic partners. She has published her work in peer-reviewed international conferences and journals.

Her current research interests include data management, data valuation and AI and engineering education. Her teaching/mentoring activities focus on developing and offering classes in project-based learning environments as well as, advising and mentoring students working in industry-driven problems.

Before joining Virginia Tech, she was tenured Associate Professor at the Computer Science Department, Aalborg University, Denmark, a Senior R&D Engineer in industry and academic research centers in USA and Europe, and the founder and Director of DataLab, George Mason University.
Mr. Jianqiang Zhang [biography]

Mr. Zhang is a Senior Learning Data Analyst at the Technology-enhanced Learning and Online Strategies (TLOS) at Virginia Tech, where he acts as a technical lead for several online teaching & learning platforms, and contributes to the learning data analytics efforts. He earned his Master of Arts in Education with a focus on Instructional Design and Technology (IDT) and is working towards his PhD in IDT, Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics with a focus on English as a Second Language (ESL), Bachelor of Arts in English with a focus on English for Special Purposes (ESP). His professional and academic interest spans accros multiple disciplines, including instructional design, learning analytics, user experience (UX), accessibility, and software/application design & development. Mr. Zhang has presented at regional and international conferences, published in academic journals and served as a volunteer peer reviewer for the Association for Educational Communications & Technology (AECT) conferences.
Dr. Luke Lester Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

Luke F. Lester, an IEEE and SPIE Fellow, received the B.S. in Engineering Physics in 1984 and the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1992, both from Cornell University. He joined Virginia Tech in 2013 as the Head of the Bradley Department of Electrical a
Dr. Kenneth Reid http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2337-7495 University of Indianapolis [biography]

Kenneth Reid is the Associate Dean and Director of Engineering at the R. B. Annis School of Engineering at the University of Indianapolis. He and his coauthors were awarded the Wickenden award (Journal of Engineering Education, 2014) and Best Paper award, Educational Research and Methods Division (ASEE, 2014). He was awarded an IEEE-USA Professional Achievement Award (2013) for designing the B.S. degree in Engineering Education. He is a co-PI on the “Engineering for Us All” (e4usa) project to develop a high school engineering course “for all”. He is active in engineering within K-12, (Technology Student Association Board of Directors) and has written multiple texts in Engineering, Mathematics and Digital Electronics. He earned a PhD in Engineering Education from Purdue University, is a Senior Member of IEEE, on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Education Society, and a Member of Tau Beta Pi.
Muhammad Dawood http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5096-9416 New Mexico State University [biography]

Dr. Muhammad Dawood received his BE degree from the NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi, Pakistan, 1985, and his MS and Ph.D. degrees, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in 1998 and 2001, respectively, both in electrical engineering. Dr

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