The pedagogical issues in engineering statics

Abstract

A study on students’ performance at an engineering department in a government-funded university in Malaysia revealed that the percentage of students not graduating on time and failed to graduate is high for a particular engineering program as compared to the other programs. A deeper study lead to one of the contributing factors, which is the poor students’ performance in their first year. Further investigation revealed that Statics, which students took as their first engineering course, has the highest failure rate. There are several cases where students had to repeat the course three times before obtaining a pass to be able to move on to the follow-on courses. This paper examines the pedagogical issues facing the teaching and learning of Statics in the case of this engineering department. The teaching approach of Statics and students learning difficulties in the course are discussed. This is compared with current trends and research findings in the same area worldwide. The findings in this paper would be useful for stakeholders involved in the design and development of this fundamental course.