2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Effectiveness of Peer Leaders Supporting Veterans in Online Engineering Programs

Presented at Military and Veterans Division (MVD) 2 - Becoming Engineering Professionals

This work is an Evidenced-Based Practice Paper. Peer support interventions have been shown to be successful in improving student performance and persistence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) disciplines in traditional classroom settings. Peer-led team learning (PLTL) is a peer support intervention where a peer leader facilitates active learning sessions with a small group of students to strengthen and provide additional clarity to specified topics and concepts in a course. Peer leaders are recruited from specific undergraduate courses where they have achieved success. The selected peer leaders participate in a 10-hour self-paced training program where they learn active learning techniques, communication strategies, and how to provide effective feedback. This research study conducted at a unique, private university recognized for offerings in aerospace and aviation-related degrees funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program seeks to examine the effectiveness of PLTL in an online asynchronous environment. The student population of this online campus comprises primarily of adult learners with most of them either military veterans or still serving in the military. This allows insights into the effectiveness of peer-led team learning with military and veteran students in an online learning environment. To date, the results of improving student performance in historically difficult engineering courses, such as statics, dynamics, digital circuit design, and aerodynamics, has been encouraging. This work explores the effectiveness of this approach with an increased number of course sections and peer leaders. It also begins to look at the effect on veteran persistence in pursing an engineering degree as the research enters its third year.

Authors

David Paul Harvie http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2576-3349 Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Worldwide [biography]

David Paul Harvie is an Assistant Professor in the College of Aviation Graduate Studies Department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University – Worldwide Campus. David has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Kansas, a M.S. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University, and a B.S. in Computer Science from the United States Military Academy. He is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
John K Wilson Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Worldwide
Ms. Kimberly A Luthi http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-3998-4567 Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Worldwide [biography]

Dr. Kimberly Luthi is an assistant professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautic University-Worldwide in the College of Aeronautics, Department of Graduate Studies. Her research background is in workforce development education and STEMP (Science, Technology, Engin
Monica Surrency Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Worldwide [biography]

Dr. Monica Surrency is the Director of Instructional Design Operations at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Worldwide campus. She holds a Master's in Instructional Systems from Florida State University and a Ph.D. in Learning Technologies from the University of North Texas (UNT). She is the 2022 recipient of the Robert M. Gagné Award for Graduate Student Research in Instructional Design for her Ph.D. dissertation at UNT. Currently, she is working on a multi-year NSF grant researching Peer-Led Team Learning in asynchronous online engineering courses for non-traditional military and Veteran college students. Her contributions to this grant include logistical setup for the control and experimental courses, recruiting research participants, conducting interviews, along with collecting, coding, and analyzing the qualitative data from both the student and Peer Leader participants in this unique learning environment.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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