Elsa Villa and Gabby Gandara

The Engineering Programs Office (EPO) at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) has a long and distinguished history of creating innovation in engineering education.  EPO is responsible for pre-college recruitment and college student enrichment and retention activities.  One of its objectives is to support a socio-academic environment that leads students to developing a high-bar standard of excellence for professional behavior and recognizing the value of life-long learning and service.  To that end, EPO employs cooperative learning approaches during student organization meetings, retreats, and workshops that engage students in a team-based environment that builds positive interdependency, shared leadership, higher self-esteem, and accountability (Johnson, 1998).

Using The Journal Place

The Journal Place has allowed EPO to create technology-based cooperative groups both in the University Seminar class that Elsa Villa, Director, and Gabriel Gandara, Assistant Director, co-teach and with the EPO undergraduate student staff that is responsible for coordinating and implementing the EPO activities.

In University Seminar

The University Seminar is now a core curriculum required course of all majors.  Created as one of several pilot programs under the National Science Foundation Model Institutions of Excellence (MIE) in 1995, the seminar targets entering students to actively engage them in the University community and maximize their potential for success in college.  It focuses on academic performance, facilitates their transition into college, enhances their essential academic skills, promotes faculty/student and student/student interaction, and encourages self-assessment and goal clarification.  The University encourages professional staff members to lead these classes along with the University faculty.  EPO professional staff members, Elsa Villa and Gabby Gandara, are now in their second semester of teaching University Seminar.

Since 1995, EPO has been immersed in using cooperating learning for both in-class pedagogy in University Seminar, for example, and in student development workshops and undergraduate staff management/training.  The cooperative learning model employed by EPO is advocated by the Cooperative Learning Center at the University of Minnesota led by Roger and David Johnson [Johnson 1998].  This model has traditionally centered on five elements: positive interdependency, group social skills, group processing, individual accountability and face-to-face promotive interaction. 

Face-to-face promotive interaction is the close bonding between group members that is created from close physical contact, “eye to eye, knee to knee.”  As the educational arena is technologically evolving with the emergence of distance learning, for example, the face-to-face promotive interaction advocated in this model may no longer be necessarily “face-to-face.”  Research at the Cooperative Learning Center is centered on creating promotive interaction in a distance-challenged environment, whether across a campus or a geographic region.

Another aspect of the cooperative learning model is the notion of base groups.  These are groups of three to four students in a class that meet regularly throughout the semester or year.  The base group becomes a support group to encourage scholarship and persistence, to name just a couple of the benefits of cooperative base groups.  The Journal Place has allowed EPO to strengthen the cohesiveness of the base group outside of the classroom environment through its interactive capabilities.

Moreover, The Journal Place creates an environment that enables the instructors to “peek into” the students’ minds to determine, for example, whether or not the students have successfully understood the material presented during the class.  In the University Seminar course that EPO taught, one class session was dedicated to goal setting.  It was apparent from the journal entries that the majority of the class did not understand short- and long-range goals.  It enabled the EPO professional staff to re-invent another approach for the very next class session that ultimately proved to be successful.  Without The Journal Place, this failure would not have been discovered until examination time – in most cases, too late.  TJP can thus be referred to as a “just in time” intervention tool – a tool that is particularly necessary in a class of this type. 

The following is an interaction between two students that indicated to us that they did indeed understand goals:

“Time management was one of my major weakness [sic] and that's why I'm trying real hard to work on it.” -Rafa

“I am still working on that part of my goals.”  -Claudia in response to Rafa

The following excerpt is evidence that positive interdependence and community building was successfully created in the class through TJP.

“Have you finish the math project? Because if you haven't maybe my group can help you and your group.” -Rafa in response to Claudia

It is oftentimes difficult to ascertain that these cooperative learning elements are in place.  TJP provides an easy mechanism to evaluate student progress in these areas.

With Undergraduate Student Staff

The Journal Place is also used with the undergraduate student staff that EPO employs each year.  The objectives of EPO, in terms of its staff, are 1) to develop the professional growth of the student and 2) implement the numerous programs that EPO administers.  These programs include middle and high school summer engineering camps, community outreach event for National Engineers Week, Engineering Job Fair, and Order of the Engineer, to name a few.

Each member of the staff is responsible for coordinating a particular activity or event during the year.  For example, EPO conducts engineering summer camps for middle and high school students.  One staff member might be responsible for overseeing the camp while another might be responsible for delivery of a particular module or set of modules.  Each staff member, therefore, must set weekly goals/objectives and progress to successfully implement their activity/event.

The challenges have been 1) tracking progress throughout the semester, 2) promoting interaction between staff members outside the office setting or weekly meetings, and 3) effectively evaluating each staff member.  The solution has been TJP.  It is a “one stop shop” that maintains records of progress for all staff members and enhances communication between student and professional staff.  Moreover, students can view the work of the other staff members as they reflect on their own progress.  This reflection is critical to their recognizing their weaknesses and strengths as they regularly assess themselves.

The Journal Place provides the perfect venue for documenting these weekly goals/objectives.  They are time-stamped and consolidated in one place that all staff members can access.  This has facilitated the understanding of the importance of setting goals/objectives and documenting progress and results.  The segment to the right illustrates how student are expected and able to list goals for their present and future tracking of their projects.  This tracking method also allows for students to be held accountable for their hours worked; the Assistant Director evaluates each goal to an estimated duration to complete that goal.  Hence, there may be as little as one goal to as many as ten goals for any given week.  The Assistant Director supervises students that do not post expected goals (comparative hours) by adding comments. 

This immediate feedback is also used to teach students how to develop a goal.  The EPO uses the acronym S.M.A.R.T. (S=specific, M-measurable, A=achievable, but challenging, R=relevant, and T=trackable) to remind students how to develop their goals.  The segment to the left shows how comments were made to assist a student with keeping their goals “SMART.”

In promoting interaction between staff members outside the office, TJP allows the students to be as creative with their journals as they want to be.  Pictures that students use on their journal have a tendency to start up conversation between staff, which leads to a better understanding of each other as individuals.  For EPO, this creates a great foundation of unity when tacking big projects.

References

Johnson, Roger, David Johnson and Edythe Johnson Holubec, Cooperation in the Classroom, Interaction Book Company, Edina, Minnesota, 1998.

National Science Foundation, Model Institutions of Excellence, through Cooperative Agreement #HRD9550502.