Examination achievement of engineering students from UKM and UDE : A comparison

Under the double-degree programme offered by universiti kebangsaan malaysia (ukm),a number of universitat duisburg-essen (ude) students are required to study in ukm for one semester each year. they are free to choose any courses offered in the programme for that particular semester. in semester 1 of the 2014/2015 session,the department of mechanical and materials engineering ran four courses that were enrolled in by students from both universities. given the different background,ways of thinking and academic competencies,it was expected that the students would perform differently and it was predicted that the german students would demonstrate better achievement compared to ukm's mostly malaysian students. the objective of this study was to discover if there was a difference in terms of performance between the international students and the host students who took the same courses. this paper consists of three main sections. first,after a general introduction of the study,the methodology is explained. second,a comparison of examination-based achievement in four selected courses between the two groups of students is presented in summary. finally,some possible reasons as well as explanations for the difference or similarity in the performance of the two groups is considered. the findings suggest that in general,students from ude showed better performance than the host students. in the long term,this study is intended to be useful in improving the quality of teaching and learning in ukm,specifically when dealing with students from ude as well as home students. © universiti putra malaysia press.