Prediction of success in engineering study

Abstract

The New Zealand Government is moving towards restricting access to tertiary education and implementing a managed entry scheme. It is therefore important to be able to predict whether a student has a reasonable likelihood of succeeding in tertiary engineering study.New Zealand secondary schools mostly operate on the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) model whereby subjects are assessed on the basis of discrete individual modules. The paper compares the NCEA results to first year grades in tertiary engineering subjects obtained from most New Zealand providers of the BE degree to determine whether these NCEA grades can be used as a predictor of success or failure in tertiary engineering programmes. This is the first nation-wide survey of its kind and has yielded surprising results. For example, predicting success based on whether a student has not achieved is more insightful than basing on achievements, which is counter to the basis of many school league tables worldwide.

Improving retention rates at first year for modern engineering students

“…Previous work by the authors [1] helped us to identify the mathematics and physics preparation deficit. This was discussed in some depth in previous sections.…”

“…Most New Zealand secondary schools operate the National Certificate of Education Achievement (NCEA) form of assessment. Problems with this assessment are detailed elsewhere [1] but will be briefly summarized in Section II.…”

Factors that affect the design of a successful engineering programme: A case study

“…For the first intake of students in 2007, we had no doubt whatsoever that our degree was of a very high academic quality and that the graduates we would produce would be equipped both to attain ready employment in industry and also to progress to postgraduate study at almost any institution. We were unable to fully define the entry criteria for enrolment into the degree due to a combination of university policy and a problematic form of High School assessment that made an evaluation of a student's academic ability problematic (refer [2] for a discussion of this). Therefore, in order to ensure the quality of our graduates, we mandated that all students pass the required suite of first year courses with the above average grade of B (65%), noting that in the New Zealand academic system a nominal pass grade is a C (50%).…”

“…Whilst a moderate predictor could be formed for the ECEN students based on physics and calculus, no such predictor could be formed for the NWEN and SWEN students [2]. It was apparent however, that despite the difficulties in directly assessing academic quality on the basis of High School grades, it was clear that student study habits and skills were extremely poor, due in a large part to NCEA grading, module selection, and ability to re-sit assessments that had previously been failed.…”

Steps to increase student engagement and retention in first year engineering

“…This comparison of student first year tertiary grades and their final year secondary school performance indicated that there are major gaps in levels of knowledge and learning abilities amongst most students. Crucially, the data revealed that prediction of success in first year tertiary engineering based on secondary school results was only possible for the ECEN major and even then was problematic [2]. This is significant since the New Zealand Government began in 2012 to link 5 percent of government funding for tertiary providers to student performance and dropout rates [3].…”