{"422561":{"#nid":"422561","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Peer Advising: Leveraging Piazza","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp class=\u0022rtecenter\u0022\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDuring the 2013 Spring semester, the School of Aerospace Engineering Student Advisory Council (SAESAC) piloted a new approach to Peer Advising.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe 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\u0027s licensing agreement with Piazza, SAESAC sought to create a forum for students to ask questions and receive answers from other students and SAESAC members.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe 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.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe 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\u0027s 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.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnother benefit of using Piazza was the ability of SAESAC members to mark a post as a \u0022good question\u0022 or \u0022good answer\u0022, 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.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"During the 2013 Spring semester, the School of Aerospace Engineering Student Advisory Council (SAESAC) piloted a new approach to Peer Advising."}],"uid":"27456","created_gmt":"2015-07-09 10:54:26","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:18:56","author":"Britanny Grace","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2013-07-21T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2013-07-21T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"1239","name":"School of Aerospace Engineering"}],"categories":[{"id":"129","name":"Institute and Campus"}],"keywords":[{"id":"2082","name":"aerospace engineering"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":["communications@ae.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}