Advantages of the TEC21 Model for the Integration of New Professors into the Faculty

One of the main characteristics of the TEC21 model, the based-competency educative model implemented at Tecnologico de Monterrey, is that most of the courses are delivered by a team of at least two professors, bringing the opportunity to use such feature as a platform to facilitate the integration of new professors into the faculty, mainly when the coordinator of the course has a background of more than 20 years of teaching in the institution and is perfectly aware of how the educative model should be implemented. Inside this framework, this work presents the experience lived during the Innovative Materials and Procedures of Construction course that took place in August-December 2023; such a course is part of the curricula of the civil engineering degree. The course was delivered by two professors, one of them with 23 years of experience in the institution and the second one with absolutely no experience in teaching. This interaction opened the possibility of a non-invasive mentorship, in which the feedback was mainly reflected throughout the student's performance during the 15 weeks of the course. The course was delivered to two different student groups; however, due to the academic commitments of both professors, for some subjects, it was necessary that the experienced professor delivered for one group and the novice professor to the other group. Despite the same material, assignments, and homework being delivered to both groups, the student's performance after the first Master Quiz depended on the professor who delivered it to the group; higher marks were obtained by the students of the experienced professor. It is important to mention that the two professors elaborated the material offered to the two groups in partnership. Because of the difference in the student's performance, it was needed to carry out a non-invasive mentorship intervention to identify those areas of opportunity for improvement. Once the improvement measurements were taken, the performance of the students was assessed by applying two additional master quizzes. The results suggest that the noninvasive intervention was accordingly conducted, allowing the novice professor to improve his performance for the benefit of the students during the development of the course and facilitating his integration into the faculty.