Findings from the Assessment of Students’ Learning Outcomes in Engineering Mathematics

Abstract

Engineering Mathematics which is one of the core subjects in civil engineering education is designed to equip civil engineering students with a strong mathematical knowledge for solving engineering problems in other courses such as fluid mechanics, soil mechanics, structural mechanics, transportation and highway engineering. The purposes of the present study are to report the findings from the assessment of students' learning outcomes in a mathematics test and to explore the issues related to the misconception and difficulties in the manipulation of the solutions. A total of 136 third year degree students were given a set of four questions related to probability and statistics in a test during the first semester of the academic year 2015-16. The answers provided by students were analysed with respect to their being correct, partial, wrong and void which yielded a general description of students' performance. It was found that only 35% of students could successfully use the integration by parts for evaluating the double integrals in probability related questions. 33% of students had a misconception about the complement of an event when they worked out the probability. In addition, only 38% of students could correctly use the logarithmic function and determine the maximum likelihood estimator from random samples. It was concluded that 60% of students faced with various levels of difficulty in the manipulation of the solutions.