Identifying the influence of mathematics on academic performance of engineering students

Abstract

Mathematics plays a major role in higher education as it is particularly essential to develop the analytical thinking of students. Investigating the student academic performance has been a crucial aspect of the educational research recently. The objective of this study is to explore the relationships between students’ mathematics performance in Level 1 and Level 2 with their engineering performance in Level 2 separately. Firstly, Canonical Correlation Analysis was employed to study the joint impact of mathematics in Level 1 and Level 2 on engineering performance. The two adjusted analyses; Partial Canonical Correlation Analysis and Part Canonical Correlation Analysis were used to determine the unique effect of mathematics in Level 1 and Level 2 on students’ engineering performance in Level 2. The study was conducted with engineering undergraduates from Chemical and Process Engineering discipline at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. Results revealed that the mathematics in Level 1 and Level 2 jointly influenced on students’ engineering performance in Level 2. Adjusted analyses showed that unique effect of mathematics in Level 2 is significantly higher compared to the unique effect of mathematics in Level 1 on students’ engineering performance in Level 2. But, there would be a notable indirect effect of mathematics in Level 1 on engineering performance in Level 2. It can be concluded that the combined effect of mathematics in both Level 1 and Level 2 is immensely beneficial to improve the overall academic performance at the end of Level 2 of the engineering students.