Attitudes and Academic Performance of Engineering Students in both Prerequisite Courses to Final Year Project and Final Year Project
Joseph Dobela and
Lone Seboni
International Journal of Higher Education, 2023, vol. 12, issue 1, 45
Abstract:
The aim of this study was to examine the attitudes of engineering students and their academic performance towards both prerequisite courses for and the final year project (FYP), given the need to increase our understanding of attitudes and performance in the context of engineering students, currently underexplored. Questionnaire surveys of 714 eligible students enrolled in the FYP across six engineering programs were conducted. The results show that students enrolled in Industrial, Mechanical and Civil engineering programs, have a negative attitude towards the FYP and its prerequisites, while students enrolled in Electrical, Electronic and Industrial Design and Technology programs have a positive attitude. A statistically strong positive correlation between project prerequisites and engineering FYP was found, confirmed by factor analysis. Majority of students struggle with project progress as compared to other stages of the FYP, due to inadequacy in fundamentals such as design. This study contributes to an understanding of existing knowledge by providing empirical evidence of not only challenges faced by engineering students (as opposed to other disciplines that have been widely covered) but also remedies to improve students’ academic performance. The findings also have implications on engineering education, in relation to informing policy decisions on engineering program structure.
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.sciedupress.com/journal/index.php/ijhe/article/download/23073/14474 (application/pdf)
https://www.sciedupress.com/journal/index.php/ijhe/article/view/23073 (text/html)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jfr:ijhe11:v:12:y:2023:i:1:p:45
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in International Journal of Higher Education from Sciedu Press Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sciedu Press (ijhe@sciedupress.com).