Analysis on Engineering Mathematics II Final Exam Questions

Abstract

Exam questions need to be analyzed so that the lecturers will have a better idea on which topics that the students find difficult to understand. The overall marks just give the grade for the students. It is very important to identify the weakness of students in a subject. This is because Engineering Mathematics subjects are the foundation for all other engineering subjects. The objective of this paper is to analyze the final exam questions for Engineering Mathematics II. To analyze this particular subject, the results of the final examination of students from Electronic and Electrical Engineering Department, Mechanical Engineering Department, Civil Engineering Department and Chemical Engineering Department are tabulated in EXCEL and later transformed into WINSTEPS. The Rasch model enables one to differentiate the difficulties of the exam questions according to different levels of the group. The Engineering Mathematics II questions can be categorized into four groups. They are very difficult, difficult, easy and very easy. The students who sat for this final examination can be grouped into 3 groups, namely high performers, medium performers and low performers. Integration of exponential function, integration by substitution, first order differential equation, using Laplace transform to solve first order differential equation, sketch graph and Fourier series are the difficult topics in Engineering Mathematics II. Partial differentiation, integration of partial fraction, integration of exponential function, integration of trigonometric function, Laplace transform and Maclaurin series are found to be the easiest topics in Engineering Mathematics II.