HOW WELL PREPARED MATHEMATİCALLY ARE OUR ENGİNEERİNG STUDENTS WHO TRANSFER FROM AN ORDİNARY DEGREE İNTO AN HONOURS DEGREE

Year 2014, Volume: 1 , 331 - 334, 01.09.2014

Michael Carr Marisa Llorens Susan O ‘shaughnessy Brian Bowe Domhnall Sheridan Sheryl Sorby

Abstract

Students who have
received a C3 (55%) or higher in Higher level mathematics in the Irish Leaving
Certificate (the terminal secondary examination in Ireland) may enter directly
onto a 4-year Honours degree in engineering. Students who have not achieved
this level of mathematics have the option of entering onto a 3-year Ordinary
degree(Level 7). Upon completion of this students may progress to the third
year of the Honours degree. Relatively little work has been done on the
transition(articulation) from an Ordinary degree to an Honours degree and in
particular the mathematical preparedness of these students. In the third and
fourth year of many Honours engineering courses within the DIT it is not
unusual to have 30-50% of the students coming from an Ordinary degree
background. The majority of these students come from within the DIT while
others transfer in from other Institutes of Technology in Ireland. Previous work
has shown that students from an Ordinary degree background are more than twice
as likely to fail mathematics in their third year of the Honours degree when
compared with students who have proceeded directly through an Honours degree
programme. In this study we analyse students’ performance across all subjects
and examine if there is a relationship between mathematical performance in the
final year of the Ordinary degree and overall performance across all subjects
in the third and fourth year of the Honours degree. In addition, a similar
comparison is made with these students mathematics grade on entry to first year
and whether this is a determining factor in their success in the in the
Ordinary degree and their ability to transfer to the Honours degree.

 

Keywords

Engineering mathematics, honours degree

References

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