Engineering Mathematics Obstacles and Improvement: A comparative study of students and lecturers perspectives through creative problem solving

This study is part of a project concerned with the students' obstacles in face-to-face Engineering Mathematics classrooms through mathematical thinking approach. The main data collection for this study was carried out through students' structured questionnaires of three classes at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) in the end of semester. The findings showed that the students' obstacles from students' and lecturers' perspectives are approximately the same and the majority of each group separately believed that two main obstacles in the learning of Engineering Mathematics are imaging and sketching in the 3-dimensions. The analysis showed that for both groups different thinking skills and tools from Creative Problem Solving (CPS) are less important methods that can help students to overcome learning obstacles. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Centre of Engineering Education, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.