Pondering Deeper onto Threshold Concepts in Engineering: A Case of Mathematical Modelling

Abstract

Teaching mathematics in South Africa continues to follow traditional pedagogy. Even though traditional pedagogy has satisfactory benefits, it is well understood that it does not effectively prepare students to perform well in Higher Education applied mathematics concepts. Moreover, traditional pedagogy seems to train students to answer questions not necessarily to solve problems through the application of knowledge. Evidently, there is less capacity to deal with open-ended problems, which is a fundamental feature for mathematical modelling formulation. This paper argues that the incapacity to handle open-ended problems is the key shortfall resulting in many deep challenges experienced by chemical engineering students. An assessment was conducted to understand the challenges facing the final year chemical engineering students doing a process control module which requires the formulation of a mathematical model using first-order differential equations. Students completed an assessment survey which measures their understanding and examines the ability to approach open-ended problems, to implore their perspectives of the module and their anticipations of the lecturer. The study found that chemical engineering students are battling to translate process related problem statements to mathematical expressions.