Engineering students' performances in mathematics through project-based learning

Project-based learning is an example of active learning and is student-driven, interdisciplinary, collaborative and technology-based. To test the hypothesis that project-based learning maximises course performance, we analysed a difficulty index of examination scores or failure rates and compared between 422 students in the 2016/2017 session, who took the Vector Calculus course and project-based learning with 342 students from the 2015/2016 session without project-based learning. The analysis of the difficulty index is used to investigate the achievement of the course outcome and the analysis on the correlation between the project-based learning scores and the final exam scores are identified using Pearson's product-moment correlation. The effect sizes indicate that on average examination scores improved by about 12% with project-based learning and students in classes with project-based learning were 3.4 times more likely to get as than students in classes without project-based learning. It is observed that the difficulty index for all course outcomes are achieved and distributed between a good range of 0.3–0.8. It is also proven that the students find it easier to answer the exam questions after the project-based learning is implemented based on the results of their mid and final semester exams.