Pre-Freshmen Students Gearing up with Early Bird

We are offering a freshmen course called “Early Bird” where students have the opportunity to take the mathematics courses of the first semester (Calculus I for Engineers and Linear Algebra for Engineers) before they are enrolled at our university. Participants accomplishing sufficiently many homework assignments are qualified to take the final written examinations even if they are (still) not enrolled. The grades of these examinations may be accepted if the students will be enrolled afterwards. In this 9 weeks course the regular calculus I and linear algebra lectures are taught in the same lecture/tutorials together. Though the workload in this course is very high for students, 99% are recommending this course to other prospective engineering students. The intention of this course is to provide the first semester students with the mathematics that will be usually used in non-math classes before it can be taught in the math classes. As mathematical knowledge and skills are some of the most important tools for engineers the Early Bird course has proved as very effective to prepare engineering students for their engineering courses. Before winter term 2008/09 we successfully offered this course for the third time. This year we had no additional financial resources to offer very small classes. On the other hand, in the week between this course and the final examinations a summer camp has been organized where recitation lessons were voluntarily offered by teaching assistants. In this article, we are comparing the final examination results of Early Bird students and regular students. We are presenting the results of the Early Bird courses of the last three years. The results will be compared with the data of regular students who took the same written exams.