Abstract
The impact of peer- and cooperative learning is two-fold: Not only do the mentees benefit, but the mentor also has a lot to gain. This forms the basis for our research. We seek to imbue active-learning and community-engagement pedagogical techniques into the introductory digital forensics course series, DF1 and DF2, at our institution (Sam Houston State University). These courses are required by the Digital Forensics major and seek to transform the freshman student into a digital forensic analyst by their junior year. Many students find this course series challenging. This leads to several issues: failure in subsequent courses, change of major, and a general degradation of student morale. An oft-repeated request from students is the availability of tutors/mentors for guidance. Lack of funding has been a primary impediment to alleviating this concern. Our research entails enlisting the DF2 students as mentors and pairing them up with specific mentees in the DF1 course, effectively creating a peer-learning community. The mechanics of our peer-learning implementation lends itself to making the classroom more responsive to diversity. It is well-known that instructors tend to orient themselves, in terms of both effort and positive affect, towards students whom they consider ‘teachable’ and steer away from students who they perceive to be difficult-to-teach. By pairing mentors and mentees with diverse backgrounds, and ethnicities, we are attempting to mitigate this issue and promote a robust and vibrant, diverse learning community.
Author Information
Khushi Gupta, Sam Houston State University, United States
Narasimha Shashidhar, Sam Houston State University, United States
Cihan Varol, Sam Houston State University, United States
Ishan Perera, Sam Houston State University, United States
Paper Information
Conference: IICE2024
Stream: Learning Experiences
This paper is part of the IICE2024 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Gupta K., Shashidhar N., Varol C., & Perera I. (2024) Peer and Cooperative Learning at the Freshman Level Digital Forensics Course Enhancement Through a Mentor-Mentee Program ISSN: 2189-1036 – The IAFOR International Conference on Education – Hawaii 2024 Official Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2189-1036.2024.2
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2189-1036.2024.2
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