Work-in-progress – Dealing with “Formulaholic” – The formulae syndrome of the new generation engineering students.

A fundamental skill set in the practice of the engineering profession is critical thinking skill. Over the years, peculiarities of generations of engineering students have become distinctively noticeable. The new generations of students enrolling in engineering programs have increasingly demonstrated unusual dependency on formulae for solving analytical problems. The dependency has reached the proportion to qualify for classification as addiction labeled as “formulaholic” and defined as “the compulsive dependency on formulae to solve analytical problems to the subdual of critical thinking skills. ” Impact of subdual of critical thinking skills also manifests in students’ reduced metacognition abilities. A new growing challenge in engineering education is to change the freshman’s mindset from formulae dependency to critical thinking. The principal project that included this issue implemented a peer group tutorial program with strong emphases on social integration. A pilot study between a test group and control group respectively, showed that participants in the peer tutorial program performed much better in the common Math course that both groups took. The work presented in this paper is a follow-up on the participants to assess the extent to which participation in the peer group tutorial has moderated their initial formulae dependent mindset. Survey results show that by learning to develop their critical thinking skills, the students gained higher confidence in their abilities as well as performed better in their courses. Index Terms Peer Group Tutorial; Peer learning; Critical thinking skills, “formulaholic” INTRODUCTION – PROBLEM ADDRESSED Formula dependency (formulaholic) negatively impacts students’ critical thinking skills. It manifests in students’ reduced metacognition abilities as displayed by students in taking tests involving analyses. Simple observational experiments of allowing students to take tests under “open book” and “close book” conditions respectively have shown some interesting observations. In the “close book” scenario, the typical test paper is full of jumbled scribbles and cancellations, suggesting uncertainties of ideas or inability to think through a problem first before offering the solution. In the “open book” scenario, the typical observation is the alarming rate at which students flip through book pages looking for formulae or prior examples that are similar to the test question. Once they find such example, if they do, they proceed to script their solution in the exact manner as the example problem, unable in some cases to account for minor differences such as change in data values, polarity or orientation in figures between example problem and test question. If they don’t find very similar example(s), the result is scribbles and cancellations in test papers as in the “close book” scenario. In both scenarios, students expend disproportionate length of time searching for previous patterns or formulae to solve problems that could have taken much shorter time, had they possessed and or applied critical thinking and metacognition skills in the solution process. GROWING CHALLENGE IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION A new growing challenge in engineering education is to change the freshman’s mindset from formulae dependency to critical thinking. The work presented in this paper is an on-going follow-up on the peer tutorial participants to assess the extent to which participation in the tutorial has moderated their initial formulae dependent mindset. The Peer Group Tutorial was established to address the broader issue of persistence in engineering programs. Perhaps partly due to formula dependency, many freshmen have tough times passing prerequisite math courses needed to enroll in engineering courses. The attrition rate in the first two years of engineering programs therefore remains very high. The study on persistence centered on identifying key factors that impacted low persistence in engineering programs and consequently explored ways for improvement. In the study on persistence, many learning models were investigated but the Pascarella and Terenzini learning model of student learning and persistence was modified as shown in fig 1 and used as framework for the study. The Tuskegee University model places strong emphasis on social integration. One outcome of the study on persistence was the implementation of a Peer Tutorial Program for the first two years of engineering study at