2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Lessons learned-Lightning Talk

Class Families - An approach in Engineering to improve student connections, positivity, retention, and success among students

The idea of class groups is very widely used in engineering education, and working in groups is one of the learning outcomes required as per ABET criteria. Most of the times, the groups are assigned for working in lab classes. Here, I am put forward a similar but, a more personal approach – class families. The members of class families were identified by random allocation in the beginning of the semester and the group members were responsible for each other like members of a close-knit family- who communicate with each other on a daily basis. The students looking out for each other helped them feel not secluded in hard times, encouraged each other to succeed in the course, gave them mental support for other courses, and also resulted in a long-term friendship that helped them in choosing other classes, projects, and internships. The class families did group quizzes each week to teach each other what they learned in class during that week, did labs together, and prepared for exams together, to name a few. In my observation, the class families approach helped the students manage their academic stress better and provided a reliable support system, ultimately contributing to student retention and academic success. The paper also discusses about some of the challenges associated with this approach.