Avaliação da ausência de pré-requisitos na retenção em disciplinas do curso de Engenharia Civil da UFPR

Abstract

The absence of prerequisites in Civil Engineering undergraduate courses raises questions about effectiveness of this tool to reduce student retention. If, on the one hand, one can imagine that prerequisites make learning easier, on the other hand, one can consider prerequisites as “obstacles” to course progression. This study aims to evaluate the influence of the absence of prerequisites in the Civil Engineering undergraduate course at UFPR through a case study. Failure rates in three disciplines of sequential knowledge were analyzed over a period of 8 years. These data allowed us to conclude that the failure rate of students with prior disapproval in previous disciplines is higher than the rate of failure of students without previous failure in those same previous disciplines. Therefore, in theory, the adoption of a prerequisite system should result in lower failure rates. However, this system excludes any possibility of student success without previous discipline approval; this is not taken into account in the calculation of the subsequent discipline failure rate. Additionally, for the study case, it was concluded the students themselves establish a “spontaneous” or “natural” prerequisite system that, in a certain way, reduces the need for the implementation of a formal one.

Keywords

• pre-requisites, course retention, higher education