Engineering Journal: Errors Committed in Integral Calculus Basis for a Review Guide

Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Errors Committed in Integral Calculus Basis for a Review Guide

This study determined the errors of engineering students in Integral Calculus in the University of Eastern Philippines UEP , Catarman, Northern Samar as basis in developing a review guide. It adopted a developmental research design. A total of 162 second year Engineering students taking up Integral Calculus, who were enrolled on the Second Semester of School Year 2016 2017,were the respondents of this study.The findings of this study show that majority of the students in Integral Calculus got “fair” to “passing” grades in their pre requisite subjects and that most of the students taking up Integral Calculus are first time takers. As shown in the results, the students had hard time understanding Integral Calculus concepts which comprises the majority of the total errors committed. The other errors committed were concepts in Algebra, Analytic Geometry, Basic Mathematics, Differential Calculus and Plane Trigonometry and due to carelessness in their solutions. These findings indicate that for the preliminary topics in Integral Calculus, the pre requisite subject where most of the students committed errors is Algebra. This can be attributed to some difficulty they are experiencing in recalling the concepts learned in this subject.The findings also show that for the higher integration techniques topics in Integral Calculus, most students are having hard time understanding these integration concepts. And in application of integration concepts in finding plane areas under and between curves and volumes of revolutions, the students lack the skills in sketching the graph.The development of a review guide for remedial instruction prior to and at the early part of the subject Integral Calculus, generally, aims to help the students, taking up Integral Calculus, in recollecting the concepts in its pre requisite subjects. The topics included are the identified concepts in pre Integral Calculus subjects where the engineering students commonly commit errors.