Expansion of a successful mentoring program in an introductory biology course

Background/Question/Methods

Students in a large-lecture first semester introductory biology course were enrolled in a developmental math course, enrolled in a math course as part of the NSF-funded Science Talent Expansion Program (STEP), or not enrolled in a math course.  In past semesters, only students enrolled in a STEP math course were eligible to attend mentoring sessions offered by two undergraduate students skilled in facilitating mentoring sessions.  The other students in the large lecture course had the opportunity to attend Supplemental Instruction (SI) sessions offered by a single SI leader.  As a result of the success of the STEP mentoring sessions in past semesters, all students for the fall 2011 semester were able to attend STEP session offered by one of six STEP mentors.  Based on our previous studies, we hypothesize that students attending more sessions will perform better in the course. In addition, we hypothesize that with increased session availability, more students who are not enrolled in a STEP math course would attend sessions. To determine if current students are comparable to students in past semesters, we will evaluate how many students moved on to the spring introductory course. 

Results/Conclusions

A regression analysis of number of sessions attended and final grade in the course indicates a positive relationship (P < 0.0001, R² = 0.23 ) supporting our hypothesis that as in past years students attending more sessions do better in the course.  We evaluated the number of non-STEP math students attending 0 to 8, 9 to 16, or more than 16 sessions for fall 2010 and fall 2011. There was a dramatic increase in students (21 to 60 students) attending more than 16 sessions in fall 2011 compared to fall 2010. There was an increase of 39 to 43 students for 9 to 16 sessions and a decrease of 132 to 86 students for 0 to 8 sessions. This supports our hypothesis that increased session availability would lead to increased student attendance.  For fall 2009, 67% of students moved on to the spring semester biology course and for fall 2010, 70% of students moved on to the spring semester biology course.  However, for fall 2011, only 56% of students moved on to the spring semester biology course.  These data may indicate that students were less prepared for a collegiate science course and emphasize the importance of more available mentoring sessions.