Comparative assessment of academic performance in Mathematics of college freshman civil engineering students: Inputs to numeracy enhancement extension project

Objective:To determine the profile of the freshman civil engineering students in Eastern Visayas State University, Philippines; to determine the mathematics performance of the students in the diagnostic test; to determine the performance of the students in the paper-and pencil test; to identify the difference in performance of the students in the paper-and pencil test when grouped according to profile variables; to determine the difference in the performance of the students in Diagnostic Test when grouped according to profile variables; and to propose a numeracy enhancement extension project based on the result of the study. Methods:This study used a comparative research design and involved 131 civil engineering students. Findings: Based on the results of the study, the following conclusion were drawn: Majority of the freshman students in civil engineering program are graduates from public Senior High Schools in Tacloban City under the STEM track, a number of them failed in algebraic expressions, equations, straight lines, conics, and trigonometry during the diagnostic test while they performed better in math enhancement and differential calculus when grouped according to the senior high school they graduated from, type of school, and track. The performance of students in diagnostic test when grouped according to senior high school from which they graduated was found significant, while performance of students in diagnostic test when grouped according to the school type were found not significant. Finally, the performance of the students in math enhancement in the paper and pencil tests when grouped according to profile variables was found significantwhen grouped according to senior high school they graduated from but not significant when grouped according to school type and track.


Introduction
Meanwhile, in a review on issues related to the assessment process and to the development of assessments that can validly assess mathematical competence in all its complexity; (2) issues related to educational policy and policy-making based on assessment data, in particular the reciprocal relationship between assessment and policy; and (3) issues related to equity, such as gender issues or the achievement gap between majority and minority students. Strong relationships between the three focus areas are found, that impact assessment validity and call for further development of assessment practices in mathematics education. (10) While several studies have been undertaken to understand factors affecting students' performance in Mathematics, this study only aimed at determining the performance of the students in the diagnostic test which includes the prerequisite knowledge before taking the first mathematics course in engineering program. It also aimed to determine if there is a difference in the performance of the STEM and Non-STEM students in the different paper-and pencil tests given in the course Differential Calculus.

Objectives of the study
The findings of the proposed study will be used to design an extension program to help the students prepare their mathematical skills needed in taking any engineering program in college.
Specifically, the study aimed: 1. To determine the profile of the freshman civil engineering students in terms of: (a) Senior High School they graduated from, (b) School Type, and (c) Track taken.
2. To determine the performance of the students in the diagnostic test in terms of the following topics: 5. To determine the difference in the performance of the students in Diagnostic Test when grouped according to profile variables; and 6. To propose a numeracy enhancement extension project based on the result of the study.

Research design
The current study used a quantitative comparative research method. Firstly, the data on profile of the college freshman students in terms of senior high school they graduated from, school type, and track taken and their performance in the diagnostic test in terms of the following topics: algebraic expressions, equations, straight lines, conics, and trigonometric functions were described. Also, this study described the performance of STEM and non-STEM students in the paper and pencil tests in mathematics enhancement and differential calculus. Finally, the difference on the performance of the college freshman students in the two areas: mathematics enhancement and differential calculus were tested. As defined, quantitative research is a means for testing objective theories by examining the relationship among variables. (11) https://www.indjst.org/

Locale of the study
The study was conducted in Eastern Visayas State University Tacloban, Philippines where the college freshman students are currently enrolled and based on the existing data they come from different types of senior high schools in the Eastern Visayas Region.
Respondents of the study A total of 131 college freshman civil engineering students from the College of Engineering of the Eastern Visayas State University were involved in the study. They were enrolled during the School Year 2019-2020.
Sampling procedure This study used the purposive sampling technique specifically the total enumeration where all the college freshman civil engineering students in the College of Engineering were considered samples of the study.

Research instruments
The research instrument was a diagnostic test structured by the researcher in order to fit to the syllabus design for the mathematics course under study. Since the instrument was indigenously made by the researcher, validation was necessary.
For the validation of the instrument, the trial run of the instrument was administered by the researcher to students who are not included in the study in order to determine its comprehensibility, usability, and administrability and to identify items not understood by the target participants.
The feedback from the pilot test of the instrument was used for its improvement. When the process and content have already satisfied the rigor or scientific research protocol, copies of the instrument were reproduced and administered to the target participants of the study.

Analysis of data
To determine the profile characteristics of the freshman civil engineering students in the College of Engineering in EVSU, mean, frequency, standard deviation and percentage were employed.
To establish if there is difference on the performance of the college freshman students in mathematics enhancement and differential calculus when they are grouped according to profile variables, t-test for independent samples and ANOVA were used.
The level of significance was set at 5%.

Results of the study
The presentation of the results follows the arrangement of the objectives of the study, to wit: profile of the freshman civil engineering students; performance of the students in the diagnostics test in Mathematics particularly in algebraic expressions, equations, straight lines, conics, trigonometric functions; difference in the performance of the students in the paper-and-pencil test according to the profile variables; and finally, difference in the performance of the students in the diagnostic test according to profile variables. Table 1 shows the profiles of the civil engineering students according to Senior High School graduated from, school type classified as Public and Private, and Senior High school track categorized as STEM and Non-STEM. These are the profile variables deemed relevant to design an extension program.

On the profile of the civil engineering students
It can be noted in Table 1 that in terms of Senior High School where respondents graduated from, Tacloban City has the highest frequency of 67 with the 51.1 percentage while outside Region 8 got the lowest frequency of 2 with the percentage of 1.5. This result implies that most of the students graduated from senior high in Tacloban City since it has the biggest number of schools offering senior high including its nearby municipalities.
Under the school type, public school got the highest frequency of 68 and a percentage of 51.9 while private school with 63 frequency and a percentage of 48.1. This result implies that there are more public senior high schools students who were enrolled in Civil Engineering.
In terms of track, STEM is more dominant compared with the Non-STEM. STEM track has the frequency of 88 with a percentage of 67.2 while, non-STEM has the frequency of 43 with a percentage of 32.8. This indicates that more students are now taking up tracks in senior high school that are preparatory to Science and Technology courses. According to the report of the Department of Education (DepEd), the number of students who became interested in Science and Technology (S&T) has significantly increased to 60 percent all throughout the years. (12) https://www.indjst.org/  Table 2 shows the performance of the student in the diagnostic test. Based on the data presented, most of the civil engineering students got a mean that is below 75 in all topics such as algebraic expressions, equations, straight lines, conics, and trigonometric functions. Out of 131 civil engineering students, 46 students have been recorded to be within the conditional failure which has a grade range from 70 to 74 in algebraic expressions. Over-all performance of the students in the diagnostic test has a mean of 73.48 with a standard deviation of 6.534 which could be interpreted as conditional failure. In the four other topics, on topics about Equations, learners obtained a mean of 69.15 and a standard deviation of 9.648; on topics about Straight lines with a mean of 68.82 and a standard deviation of 9.644; on Conics with a mean of 68.98 and a standard deviation of 8.727; and Trigonometric functions with a mean of 67.64 and a standard deviation of 7.489. Over all, these results in the four topic areas in Mathematics seem to be low because the aggregate means in all topics failed to reach the passing grade which is at least 75 percent. The standard deviation results indicate that the students' grades are highly variable in the topics equations and straight lines.

On the performance of students in the paper-and pencil tests according profile variables
The third problem of this study dealt with the performance of the students in the paper-and pencil tests when grouped according to profile variables.
3.1 According to the senior high school they graduated from Table 3 shows the performance of students in the paper and pencil test according to the senior high school they graduated from. Based on the results in PPTs specifically in math enhancement, students who come from outside the Region 8 got a mean 89.00 with a standard deviation of 7.071; students from Biliran with 88.00 mean and standard deviation of 5.177; students from Samar with a mean of 86.84 and a standard deviation of 6.274; students from Leyte with a mean of 83.38 with a standard deviation of 4.518; and finally, students from Tacloban City with a mean of 82.94 with a standard deviation of 6.252. From the data shown, senior high school students who graduated from Tacloban City were recorded to be at the bottom among the six (6) senior high schools. Meanwhile, the pencil and paper tests in differential calculus got a little the same trend of results but obviously a way lower in the computed mean grades in all senior high school where they graduated from. Again, the students from outside the Region 8 got a mean of 87.00 with a standard deviation of 4.243; followed by those students from Biliran with a mean of 83.83 with a standard deviation of 3.189, next students from Samar with a mean of 78.95 with a standard deviation of 5.390; and finally, students from Tacloban City and Leyte have almost the same computed mean grades. Students from Tacloban City and Leyte were found to be at the bottom based on the PPTs results in differential calculus.

According to the type of school
The performance of the students in the paper-and pencil tests by school type suggests that mean grade of the students in the public schools are higher than the students in the private school both for mathematics enhancement (Public: 84.63 > Private: https://www.indjst.org/ 83.22) and Differential Calculus (Public: 77.72 > 75.49). The results implied that performance of students in either public or private schools have a very slight difference as revealed in the computed mean grades.

Performance of students in paper-and pencil tests by track
The performance of the students in the paper-and pencil tests by track suggests that mean grade of the students in the STEM are higher than the students in the Non-STEM both for mathematics enhancement (STEM: 84.55 > Non-STEM: 82.74) and differential calculus (STEM: 77.33 > Non-STEM: 75.26). https://www.indjst.org/ It can be deduced from the data presented that senior high school students who graduated from STEM have better performance compared with those students who graduated from Non-STEM, in both math enhancement and differential calculus paper and pencil test but with a slight difference only. Table 6 shows the test of difference in the performance of students in the diagnostic test as group according to their profile variables. It could be gleaned that among the three profile variables, only the grouping variable on senior high school where respondents graduated from yielded significant results. With the given results, the null hypotheses that says, "there is no significant difference in the performance of students in diagnostics test when grouped according to profile variables" is rejected at least in senior high school where the students graduated from. Whereas, there is a failure in rejecting the null hypothesis when the performance of the students in the diagnostic test was compared with the profile variables specifically school type and track for both were found to be not significant with a p-value of 0.151 and 0.301, respectively.

On the difference in the performance of students in the diagnostics test
And further analysis of the results were treated using the post-hoc test as shown in Table 7 where meaningful differences exist between groups the case of Leyte and Biliran.  Table 8 shows the significant difference between profile variables and performance of the students in the paper-and pencil tests in mathematics enhancement and differential calculus.

Difference in the performance of students according to their profile variables
It terms of senior high school where respondents graduated from, it can be inferred that there is significant difference among the group of schools they graduated from (F = 2.916, p<0.05) in mathematics enhancement and in differential calculus (F = 7.227, p<0.05). It implies that school graduated may influence the benefits of getting good grades or perform better in a test.
In terms of school type and track, it can be inferred that there are significant differences in the performance of students in differential calculus when grouped by school type (t = 2.33, p<0.05) and track (t = 2.124, p<0.05). These further indicate that there is a difference in the performance of the students in public and private and STEM and Non-STEM.
https://www.indjst.org/ The post-hoc test was utilized in this study since significant results were found in the analysis of variance. Post-Hoc test is a priori test for which a specific pairwise group differs where it is performed when the results of an ANOVA yielded a significant F-statistics. It is classified into equal variances assumed and unequal variances assumed.
For the Mathematics Enhancement, the ANOVA shows significant results but the post-hoc test does not, this implies that the data is not sufficient to make statements about pairwise comparisons because some groups have smaller sample sizes which lead to loss of statistical significance for comparing two groups.
For Differential Calculus, The Levene statistic is a test for homogeneity of variances, as can be gleaned from the table, the p-value (0.146 > 0.05) is thus interpreted, as equal variances assumed. Further, the Scheffe post-hoc test is deemed appropriate in exploring all the simple and complex comparisons, equal variances assumed, and unequal group sizes in terms of senior high school where the students graduated (Samuels, 2016). Only significant pairwise comparisons are shown. The table shows that there is a meaningful difference in the means of the groups being compared: Tacloban City and Biliran; Leyte and Biliran; and Outside Region VIII and Leyte.

Conclusion
Based on the results of the study, the following conclusions were drawn: (1) Majority of the freshman students in civil engineering program are graduates from public Senior High Schools in Tacloban City under the STEM track; (2) A number of civil engineering students in EVSU failed in algebraic expressions. Equations, straight lines, conics, and trigonometry as reflected in their performance in the diagnostic test; (3) The civil engineering students performed better in math enhancement and differential calculus as reflected in their mean grade average that range from passed to superior when group according to senior high school graduated from, type of school, and track; (4) The performance of students in diagnostic test when grouped according to senior high school they graduated from was found significant, while performance of students in diagnostic test https://www.indjst.org/ when grouped according to the school type and were found not significant; (5) Finally, the performance of the students in math enhancement in the paper and pencil tests when grouped according to profile variables was found significant at least in senior high school they graduated from but not significant when grouped according to school type and track. While, significant results yielded when performance of the students in differential calculus in paper and pencil tests when grouped according to all profile variables.

Recommendations
Based on the conclusions given, the following are hereby recommended: 1. Identify the specific schools in Tacloban City that offer Senior High School Programs who are enrolled under STEM Track and those low performing in Mathematics. 2. Develop modules to enhance numeracy skills of STEM Senior High School Students particularly on topics of algebraic expressions, equations, straight lines, conics, and trigonometric functions. 3. Institutionalize and propose an extension project to enhance the numeracy skills of STEM Senior High Schools students in Tacloban City. 4. In-depth study of profiling of STEM senior high school students on their numeracy skills be conducted that would serve as inputs to a more meaningful extension project of mathematics teachers of the University.