Active Student Engagement in STEM Fields to Improve Retention and Graduation Rates

It is observed that the Engineering students are coming in with weakness in problem solving skills. For example, in Electric Circuits I course, they are able to apply principles of Ohm’s Law, Kirchhoff’s laws, mesh and nodal analysis techniques. However, they can obtain the solution of resulting simultaneous equations correctly 80% of the time. They are making mistakes in solving two or three variable algebraic simultaneous equations. Therefore, 90% of mistakes are in calculation of unknown variables. This is also true in Electric Circuits II course where they have difficulties in applying calculus and differential equations. This type of weakness exists in all branches of engineering. One way is to actively engage students with some intervention. We have designed an intervention mechanism and have been experimenting for the last two years. This paper describes intervention experiment and results from tracking of their cumulative GPAs for three-year period.