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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Atlanta, GA | Posted: July 21, 2013
During the 2013 Spring semester, the School of Aerospace Engineering Student Advisory Council (SAESAC) piloted a new approach to Peer Advising.
The focus of Peer Advising is to give students an opportunity to speak with other students in order to help plan their schedules, course load, co-op/internships, study abroad, etc. In the past, SAESAC, had simply had senior members hold the equivalent of Office Hours, but this approach could only benefit a limited number of students. By leveraging Georgia Tech's licensing agreement with Piazza, SAESAC sought to create a forum for students to ask questions and receive answers from other students and SAESAC members.
The benefits of this forum would include anonymity (prevent the question from embarrassing the student), 24-7 availability for the two weeks that posts could be created, and serve as a resource (i.e., Frequently Asked Questions) for students to reference throughout the year. While the program was piloted and monitored by all SAESAC members, Bryan Wills (undergraduate student) and Michael Miller (graduate student, Chair of SAESAC) directly managed the creation of the forum.
The results from the pilot program were better than anticipated. There were 157 students enrolled in the site, and 318 total contributions. The average response time to a student's question was less than 45 minutes. The quality of the discussions seemed very beneficial to the students and will serve as a resource for students to reference in the future.
Another benefit of using Piazza was the ability of SAESAC members to mark a post as a "good question" or "good answer", allowing students to quickly filter through discussions. The success of this new approach to Peer Advising has led to SAESAC preparing a proposal to increase the scope of the program for the entire College of Engineering.
