Analysis of the Academic Performance of Mechanical-Electrical Engineering Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study in a Private University in Peru

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, brought with a number of problems in different sectors, one of the most affected was the education sector, especially in engineering programs, since these have a practical nature and need laboratories to consolidate meaningful learning. In many cases, the virtualization generated some anomalous behavior in the academic indicators that could be used for the analysis of the successes and errors that could lay the foundations for a modern education in engineering careers. The main objective of this research is to analyze the average academic performance per course of a mechanical-electrical engineering program, for which some data was taken from 2018 to 2021. To explain the behavior of the curves, a qualitative survey was applied to 357 students. Three academic indicators are used in the study: grades average, “not pass” rate, desertion rate. The results of the analysis showed that in the first period of the year 2020 (starting period of confinement) they presented very different parameters from those already known in previous years, which could be based on three main causes. The first was due to the full-time dedication of the students to carry out their academic activities, the second is based on the proper technology, resources and strategies adopted by the university and finally, the economic aid from the Peruvian government.