An evaluation of physics achievement of engineering students in selected universities and colleges in the Philippines

The study determines the strengths and weaknesses of the third year engineering students in the field of physics in terms of the cognitive skill levels and content areas. All data used in the study were taken from the achievement testings in the field of biology, chemistry and physics and mathematics conducted by the Philippine Science and Mathematics Council (PSMC) during the school years 1982-1983 and 1983-1984, with permission granted by the PSMC. The answer sheets in physics achievement test of third year engineering students were singled out for the study. Means, medians and standard deviations were computed from the frequency distributed ungrouped scores. The difficulty indices were determined from the proportions of the subjects answering the items correctly. These difficulty indices were the basis for determining the strengths and weaknesses in physics of the engineering students as manifested by the results of their physics achievement test. The physics achievement, as indicated by the scores, was correlated with some nominal and interval data using Point-biserial correlation coefficients and Pearson\u27s product-moment correlation coefficients, respectively. Hypotheses were tested at, at least 5 percent significance level using Student\u27s t-test. Findings The 1983-84 third year engineering students have weak physics achievement in the cognitive skill levels of Knowledge and Application, but have strong physics achievement in the Comprehension level. The same students have strong physics achievement in the content areas of Mechanics, Thermodynamics and Electromagnetism, but weak physics achievement in the content areas of Optics and Modern Physics. The physics achievement of the 1983-84 third year engineering students are not significantly different from the national norms established by PSMC in 1982-83. Both EE and ME students have significantly higher physics achievements than both ChE and CE students. The physics achievement of engineering students is not significantly related with the following factors