2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engineering statics and mechanics courses play a pivotal role in shaping students’ trajectories through engineering fields, often serving as high-stakes “gateway” courses that influence major persistence and long-term success. Unfortunately, these courses can also exacerbate existing inequities in performance.

This study examined the implementation of interteaching, a student-centered, behavioral pedagogical method that incorporates repeated engagement with core content through five main steps: primary source, preparation guides, peer teaching, instructor-led clarifying lectures, and examinations. This study used the interteaching pedagogy in the context of a combined, 16-week, engineering statics and introductory solid mechanics course.
Engineering statics and mechanics classes (N = 3, n = 62) were randomly assigned to either a traditional lecture format or an interteaching format. Results showed that, while average performance improved modestly over the course of the semester for those in the interteaching condition (t = 2.08, p = .006), the most significant gains were observed among students who performed below the median on the first exam. These students showed statistically significant improvement across subsequent exams (β = 2.55, 95% CI: [1.11, 3.99], suggesting that interteaching may especially help narrow performance gaps between low and high-performing students. Moreover, students in the interteaching condition reported greater use of the textbook (p < .001).

By adopting interteaching for engineering statics and mechanics education, this study highlights a promising and scalable approach for reducing early academic performance disparities and fostering success in foundational coursework.