High attrition rates in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields are major challenges in undergraduate education. Many students enrolled in STEM fields end up switching their majors to non-STEM fields or leave college without earning any academic qualification. Due to these reasons, the United States is facing a critical shortage of future talented STEM personnel in the domestic workforce. Therefore, graduating a sufficient number of talented students in STEM fields has come to national attention. It is important to examine strategies for improving STEM-major retention and undergraduate education in STEM disciplines. The main purpose of this study was to investigate methods to improve students’ social and peer-mentoring interactions within the undergraduate chemistry program at Mississippi State University to improve student learning and their attachment to chemistry and the STEM major. In Chapter II, a study performed to examine peer-mentoring interaction patterns that occur between laboratory partners in the General Chemistry I laboratories is discussed. In this study, five different laboratory partnership types were created. In the development of some partnership types, Math ACT score and lecture section were used as metrics for matching lab partners to create supportive peer-mentoring interactions. Also, students were encouraged to participate in external study groups during the semester. This research study determines whether valued peer-mentoring interactions in the laboratory could support students to be more successful in their chemistry coursework and to have improved social interactions. In Chapter III, a peer review writing assignment that mimics the publication process is presented. This writing assignment supports students to improve their writing skills by reviewing peer write-ups and practicing critical analysis of their work. This assignment is introduced to upper-level undergraduate students to improve their scientific literacy skills in order to prepare them for future scientific communication. In Chapters IV and V, two new laboratory experiments that are connected to real-life scenarios are presented. These laboratory experiments are designed to improve student interest in laboratory learning and to enhance their learning in chromatography techniques and hands-on experience with the GC-MS instrument.

Cette recherche-action a pour objectif de mesurer les impacts d’une expérimentation de la révision collaborative étayée en didactique de la production écrite en langues étrangères. Un dispositif d’enseignement de la révision collaborative a été élaboré et expérimenté pendant un semestre dans une classe de vingt-deux étudiants vietnamiens de français langue étrangère. Dans la classe expérimentale, les textes ont été révisés par le pair à l’aide d’une grille de révision collaborative, puis réécrits et corrigés par l’enseignant. Dans la classe de contrôle, les textes ont été écrits une fois et révisés par l’enseignant. Un corpus de textes et rétroactions, des interactions orales entre pairs, des tests, un questionnaire d’auto-évaluation, des entretiens semi-directifs ont été recueillis comme données. Les résultats montrent des impacts significatifs de la révision collaborative étayée sur les stratégies de révision, sur la qualité de la cohérence dans les textes et sur la relation entre le rédacteur et le lecteur. Ce nouveau mode d’apprentissage a été bien évalué par les étudiants. / This action-research aims to measure the effects of a trained peer review experiment in L2 writing instruction. A classroom-based study on peer review training was conducted during one semester with 22 Vietnamese students in a writing class. In the experimental group, the drafts were revised by pair with a peer review checklist questions, then rewritten and corrected by the teacher. In the control group, the drafts were written once and corrected by the teacher. Text and feedbacks corpus, pairs oral interactions, tests, questionnaire surveys and semi-directed interviews were collected as data. The analysis shows significant impacts of trained peer review on revision strategies, on quality of text coherence and on relationship between the writer and the reader. This new approach of learning was well evaluated by students.