Work-in-progress - assessment of peer-led team learning in an engineering course for freshmen

ECE 110 is required for freshmen majoring in electrical engineering or computer engineering at Illinois. In ECE 110 in Fall 2007, we organized optional supervised study sessions to implement peer-led team learning workshops. Each session met for 90 minutes per week. In the sessions, students worked on difficult problems selected from examinations given in previous semesters. We obtained ACT-Math scores and implicit consent from 208 of the 297 students who started the course; 43 of these attended sessions regularly-six or more of the eleven sessions. The regular attendees scored significantly higher on the final examination than did the other students, even though their ACT-Math scores were slightly lower. Among electrical and computer engineering majors, regular attendance did not appear to affect decisions to remain in electrical or computer engineering. Regular attendees reported that in the study sessions, they improved their understanding of the material, and they made new friends.