Integration Performance in Intermediate Calculus Course at Diploma Level in the East Coast of Malaysia

Aims: Calculus course plays an important role in the success of science and technology as it compounds knowledge, performances and understanding developed in the fundamental stages for other mathematical, science and technology courses. Previous studies claimed that integration is a difficult topic as compared to the other topics in Calculus course. However, studies on how far the integration performance contributes to the overall performance of the subject itself are remained unanswered. Thus the objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between students’ integration performance with their performance in Intermediate Calculus (known as Calculus I) course.

Place and Duration of Study: 676 students’ examination papers from two consecutive semesters for year 2016 at the Diploma level in one higher institution in the East Coast of Malaysia were analyzed in this study. Marks obtained from each question were used as the performance indicator.

Methodology: The descriptive analysis was used to compare the performance of two consecutive semesters of students in their final exam for Calculus I. The students who scored less than half of 33 marks (less than 16.5) in integration topic were deemed as having low integration performance. Otherwise they were considered as having high integration performance. By using the cross-tabulation and Chi-Square correlation, the relationship between the scores obtained in integration topic and final examination results were investigated.

Results: The findings revealed students with low integration performance have high tendencies to fail the final examination and students with high integration performance have more chances to pass the final examination. In addition, the result showed that more than half of the repeaters have the tendency to fail the course again. Meanwhile, the result also showed that students who remained weak in the previously taught concept were also unable to solve the problem posed to them in the integration topic. Based on the findings of the study, it is recommended that educators need to plan effective strategies such as organizing the diagnostic test at prior to the Calculus class, promoting actively the mathematics clinic, organizing workshop for the diagnosed weak students or peer group discussion, and sharing materials with the students through the online learning platform.