Potential Remedies for Improving the Engineering Students' Learning Strategies at Thailand's Assumption University

摘要

This research was conducted in response to the problems encountered by the Basic Science Department, Faculty of Engineering of Assumption University (Au) in Bangkok, Thailand. The goal was to develop an effective teaching-learning program for engineering students and to increase awareness about the advantages and disadvantages resulting from individual teaching quality and teaching styles. Established in 1990, the Faculty of Engineering produces well-qualified engineers that meet satisfaction among various stakeholders. On the other hand, the number of new students joining the Faculty of Engineering has been steadily decreasing. Students drop out in increasing numbers; the caliber of incoming students has been declining every semester. They pay less attention during lecture sessions and complain of encountering significant difficulty when trying to master and comprehend basic science material. Even though Au imposes a strict attendance policy on students, very few come to all classes. Some students enroll and study for more than 5 years in order to complete the 4 year program; some study the same subject two, sometimes three times before receiving a passing grade. Do such problems indicate that there is something wrong with the existing Au engineering program? Do they indicate a lack of pre-requisite knowledge from the pre-university level? The Basic Science Department, being the core of the Faculty of Engineering program, feels that it has the responsibility to find ways and means to alleviate these problems. For those students who do not have an adequate background in mathematics and physics, Au offers both pre-physics and pre-calculus classes prior to allowing them to enroll in Calculus I and Physics I. As an initial approach, the Basic Science Department introduced one and one-half hour classroom tutorial sessions for Calculus I, Calculus II, Physics I and Physics II subjects per week. Instructors were assigned to provide problems during those sessions and to let the students work on solving them, explaining common mistakes. Lack of students' enthusiasm made this approach unfruitful; very few students participated. After providing tutorial sessions for two years, instructors joined together to provide tutorial room service for those who were reluctant to approach them during regular lecture periods. Assignments were given weekly and telling the students to come in and submit their assignments. Assigned peers, who are good in their studies, were appointed as Teaching Assistants to correct submitted assignment and explain to their juniors about their mistakes. The majority of the students submitted "copied" assignments according to their target date just to get marks from assignment submission, but rarely came and got their corrected assignments. The outcome was almost the same as for tutorial sessions. Beginning in the academic year 2005, one and one-half hour workshop sessions for every basic science subject was introduced. During the sessions, students were divided into small groups and challenging problems were provided. Students worked together to solve the problems and asked questions during that time. Students' performance scores were collected for academic years 2003 to 2006 (i.e., mid-term and final examination marks); mean, standard deviation, withdrawal percentage and class percentage. Bar graphs were drawn for each subject and lecturers were informed about their students' performance during departmental meetings (twice per semester). By doing this, lecturers were able to remind students of their condition and also improve their learning ability as well as be aware of changes in their teaching and learning environment. Students' performance data were analyzed to produce appraisal reports for the individual subjects. It is still early to predict which of the approaches is better than the others as the workshop approach was only recently introduced in 2005. Generally speaking, depending on the individual lecturer's