Work in progress - improving self-efficacy with a freshman mentor program

Transitioning from high school to a university setting is difficult, and when combined with the academic stresses of an engineering program, low undergraduate retention rates are a common problem. A solution is to produce a curriculum that can instruct students about engineering basics while improving self-efficacy. Most current methods to increase self efficacy are mentorship programs, addressing different learning pedagogies, and creating separate learning communities. Execution of these methods is prohibitive when educating large numbers of students. Preliminary self efficacy survey results show an improvement in our students as a response to both our Freshman Mentor program and Platform for Learning, TekBots.