Evaluation of pilot test on improving students’ performance using rasch model

Abstract

Poor performance of students in Engineering Mathematics can be overcome by introducing innovative way in teaching. Teaching Engineering Mathematics via lab has been proven to boost the students’ performance in Engineering Mathematics. Thus, the objective of this study is to conduct a pilot test to evaluate students’ knowledge prior to introducing lab session to engineering undergraduates. A pilot test was conducted on third semester students in engineering faculty. A total of 35 students from Electrical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Chemical Engineering participated in the pilot test. Six course outcomes are chosen from Vector Calculus, Linear Algebra and Ordinary Differential Equations subjects. Six subjective questions were prepared and the questions were validated by three internal experts. The results of the test were analyzed against Rasch model. The item reliability 0.69 shows an average difficulty of spread of the pilot test questions. Furthermore, the summary statistics for item shows the questions can be separated into two different groups. The person-item distribution map shows that the distribution of questions categorized into difficult and easy groups. Question1 and question 2 fall into easy group. Question 3, question 4 and question 5 and question 6 fall into difficult group.