The correlation between electrical engineering course performance and mathematics and prerequisite course achievement

Malaysia requires human capital with critical thinking and ability to solve problems to drive the country. these attributes are also required by the engineering accreditation council (eac),which stipulates that engineering students must have the ability to solve complex problems. many electrical and electronics engineering courses require good understanding in mathematics to solve complex problems. in addition,some engineering courses have prerequisite courses,which students must complete before they can enrol in those courses in later semesters. normally,prerequisite courses are fundamental courses and they play important roles in helping students understand the content of the course that requires the prerequisite. in this study,the relationship between student performance in electrical and electronics engineering courses and mathematics and prerequisite course achievement is identified. one mathematics and three engineering courses are used in this study,namely calculus vector (kq1124),circuit theory 2 (kl1124),electromagnetic fields and waves (kl2134) and signal and system (kl2124). the pearson correlation test using spss was used to identify the relationship between electrical and electronics engineering course performance with mathematics and prerequisite courses achievement. the results show that there is a strong positive relationship between engineering courses and previous mathematics achievement. a strong positive relationship also exists between performance in an engineering course and its prerequisite course. © universiti putra malaysia press.