Assessing the Effect of Laboratory Activities on Core Curricular Units of an Engineering Master's Program: A Multivariate Analysis

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2021

Authors

António Mendes Lopes (Author) FEUP; Lucas F. M. da Silva (Author) FEUP; Jorge Seabra (Author) FEUP

Journal

Title: Mathematical Problems in Engineering

Vol. 2021

Pages: 1-13

ISSN: 1024-123X

Publisher: Hindawi

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 1 Citation

Scopus - 2 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-00T-ZZS

DOI: 10.1155/2021/6678486

Abstract (EN): This paper studies the effect of laboratory activities on the results obtained by the students on 7 core curricular units (CUs) of an Integrated Master in Mechanical Engineering. Each CU is characterized by means of 4 performance indices, over the 6-year period 2014/2015-2019/2020. Firstly, individual indices in a per semester basis are compared. Secondly, the CUs are regarded as objects defined in a 4-dimensional space of features, and the multidimensional scaling (MDS) technique is adopted for clustering and computer visualization. The MDS is powerful for analyzing the multivariate dataset, unveiling patterns not perceived by standard statistical methods.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 13