Scaffolding distance learning in mathematics for engineering: identifying key troublesome knowledge

Abstract

Mathematics skills are critical in engineering, yet many students enter university without sufficient proficiency. At the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), the Faculty of Engineering and Surveying (FoES) has a large number of external mature age students, many of whom have forgotten or never learnt these skills. We aim to improve students’ completion and satisfaction rates in mathematics-based courses in first year engineering by incorporating more scaffolded learning into the materials. The specific objective of the research related to this paper is to identify forgotten concepts, troublesome knowledge, threshold concepts and 'stuck places' (Meyer & Land 2005, 2006) in mathematics. A survey of 31 staff in the Faculty of Engineering and Surveying described the relationships among the key mathematics areas and the USQ FoES courses. A focus group session with 16 mathematics staff identified the topics and concepts that the instructors thought were crucial. Individual interviews with four introductory mathematics instructors confirmed the results of the survey and focus group, and characterized the underlying threshold concepts of select topics. The results of this data will be used to develop learning objects and materials.