A Method Of Predicting The Chances Of Successor Failure For Individual Students In Large Introductory Engineering Physics Classes

It would be except ionally beneficial to know which students were going to pass and which studculs were going to Ihil a subject prior to beginning the class. I Iowever, due to the dynamic nature of the teaching method, where instructo]-s @ to help poorer students, and students rise to the challenge of the new material being taught, it is nearly impossible to pi-edict the final distribution of marks in a subject. This is especially true for small classes whine the instmctolcan assess the students continually and individually, and respond to ihcir various problems. [t is also true tbr subjects taught in the third and tburth years of an engineering student’s university education, due to smaller student class sl~es and a more cohesive student grouping. 1 Iowever, in introductory subjects, such as }~ngine.x-x-ing Physics, where the student class sizes range from 170 to 350 students, there is Iitlle chance tbr the Iect urer to assess the students individually or continually. Also, instead of the students being a cohesive group of students, as they are in the later years of their education, they come from extremely ciiversc educational, economic and cultural backgrounds. ‘1’bc large population sizes and hetemgenous mixture of these introductory subjects, in concert with the exhaustive testing ofthe students’ capabilities both from their Tertiary Ilntrance Scores and their introductory university achievement tests, allow highly correlative predictive indicators to be applied that give students a probabilistic assessment of their chances to successfully complete their introductory Engirwcring Physics subject, In this way, a student knows kom the very beginning where they stand in the class, and the efh-t they must put forward to compctc successfully in the class, In addition, their progressive assessment throughout the course of the subject can be used by the student as a positive feedback mechanism concerning their progress through the subject. The results of the analysis show that students can be ad~rised as to their chances of failing or passing to a high probability, but obviously not with absolute certainty. 1 Iowever, some students that have exceedingly high scores or exceedingly low scores in their high school and university testing can be given almost total assurance that they will pass or fail the subject respectively.