Abstract:

For engineering students, Mathematics courses are fundamental for their studies, an appropriate background in this area is needed for later subjects of the engineering major. However, it is also known that these courses are the most difficult in any study plan. Having problems with Mathematics courses involves investing more time than the specified for finishing a bachelor degree.

This problem grows when there exists a serial relationship between several courses, this means that for taking a later one, the previous one must have to be approved. Especially in engineering programs, a lot of courses have a Mathematics branch as a background, and when a student does not approve one of these, it is common that their options for taking other courses became limited. Even, when students take several opportunities for approving a course, it is possible, and very frequent, that some scholar periods they do not take any other course, increasing considerably the time needed for finishing their studies, or worse, forcing them to drop them out.

It is also clear that this problem has a different impact according to the Engineering program and it is also evident that non-approving Mathematics courses generates several problems for students, however, it is until this problem is analyzed that can be measured.

For this reason, this work presents the analysis of the impact of non approving certain Mathematics courses in Mexican Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Azcapotzalco (UAM-A) where there are offered ten different Engineering programs and all of them share a set of Mathematics courses that belong to the called General Branch.

The problem is analyzed considering the number of credits (in UAM-A, all courses give a certain number of credits after approving it) that students obtain when they can not take different Mathematics courses. In particular, this study involves the effect of five different courses: Mathematics Workshop, Essential Calculus, Differential Calculus, Integral Calculus, and Differential Equations. The impact of each course is analyzed for each of the ten different Engineering programs offered at UAM-A: Environmental, Civil, Computer, Electric, Electronic, Physic, Industrial, Mechanic, Metallurgical and Chemical.

Consider that at UAM-A, a student can only take a course twice, then it has to approve it through a special exam called “examen de recuperación”. Is in this case where students take a lot of time for approving. Time analyzed comprise from the moment the student could not take a different Mathematics course until the moment they had approved it, but there are cases that have not approved a course yet.

Results are presented using different information visualization techniques and show the real impact that not approving Mathematics courses are having over the students of the different Engineering programs at UAM-A. This also would give an idea of the way that study plans are structured and how much they depend on certain courses.

Keywords:

Educational analytics, mathematics courses flow, student progress in relation to math courses, student progress, study plans structure.