Predicting Success in a Quality Control Course: Does Time Since Taking the Prerequisite Course Matter?

The research objective of this paper is to evaluate predictors of success for a quality control course for undergraduate engineering majors at East Carolina University. The 37 predictors included demographic data (e.g., age, gender, race, academic major), records of success (e.g., incoming GPA, performance in prerequisite courses, time between prerequisite courses and the quality control course), and additional course indicators (e.g., class time of day, student attendance, performance on Test 1 versus overall). This quality control course is evaluated over a three year period with five offerings (sections) by the same instructor for 127 students. The results indicate that the time between the prerequisite course and the quality control course is not statistically significant to success in the quality control course. However, the student’s prior semester GPA, incoming cumulative GPA, and performance in the prerequisite course are significant to success in the quality control course. Background and Motivation The quality control course at East Carolina University is a graduation requirement for all students majoring in engineering. For the majority of these students it is a terminating course in the area of statistics within their curriculum plan since it is not a prerequisite for any other course. For a small minority, an elective course in lean six sigma is taken that requires quality control as a prerequisite. The quality control course prerequisite is a calculus-based probability and statistics course in the mathematics department, which has calculus II as a prerequisite. This course sequence and prerequisite structure is shown in Figure 1. It should be noted that probability and statistics is a prerequisite for several other engineering courses, not just quality control. Figure 1: Prerequisite path for Quality Control at East Carolina University. The conundrum that occurs is when should students take quality control? The reason for this issue is that students routinely take it as early as sophomore year to as late as their culminating Calculus I Calculus II Probability & Statistics Quality Control Lean and Six Sigma Required for Engineering Degree Elective semester. Furthermore, since the course can be slotted during any of those semesters, it is often shuffled around courses which are more difficult to schedule (e.g., major courses, special electives); thus, at East Carolina University a variety of students, from second semester sophomores to last semester seniors, are enrolled in the course during any given semester. The motivation for this research was initially to answer the question, “Does the time since taking the probability and statistics prerequisite matter in the subsequent quality control course?” Answering this question would be useful for the engineering department at East Carolina University since the different engineering concentrations (majors) have different projected curriculum plans (paths) which impact when the students take quality control. However, to analyze a broader set of potential influences, the scope of this paper was expanded to include other factors that may or may not impact success in quality control at East Carolina University. Those factors included demographic data (e.g., age, gender, race, academic major), records of success (e.g., incoming GPA, performance in prerequisite courses, time between prerequisite courses and the quality control course), and additional course indicators (e.g., class time of day, student attendance, performance on Test 1 versus overall). The paper is formatted as follows: a literature review is provided in the next section; then methodology is presented; results are provided; a discussion is given; and finally conclusions and future work are offered.