Identifying reasons for students' non-uniform learning outcomes

This paper presents results of an investigation into identifying reasons for students’ non-uniform assignment outcomes in a first year subject in the Civil Engineering discipline and proposees some effective measures to overcome this issue. The subject has been taught for three years since it was introduced in 2007. The assessment of the subject includes three assignments contributing 40% of the final result. In 2007 and 2008 the author observed that students performed well in the the first and third assignment, however student performance in Assignment 2 was poor. This observation was confirmed through statistical analysis of the students marks from these two years. In an attempt to rectify the less than satisfactory student results in assignment 2 a change was made to the amount of teaching and tutorial time allocated to preparing for this assignment in 2009. It was found that this increase in teaching time allocated to mathematical calculations produced significant positive outcomes. While student results in Assignment 2 improved to a satisfactory level, assignment 2’ remained the least performing assignment compared to other assignments in the subject. To gain a deeper understanding students were surveyed. The initial hypothesis of this study was that the mathematical calculation focus of Assignment 2 might be the reason for lower student performance, however results of the survey show that the majority of students did not agree with this hypothesis. Students reported that they found Assignment 2 interesting and they understood the concepts and theory that it was testing. It would appear that other factors, perhaps the timing of the assignment mid-semester competing with other subject assessment, may account for the dip in student results. The outcomes from this investigation inform a set of recommendations for future teaching of the subject.