Contextual Teaching of Engineering Mathematics to Improve Levels of Accuracy and Confidence in COVID-19 Knowledge

Since late March 2020, reports about the COVID-19 pandemic flooded the daily news. However, most of the epidemiological terms of used in the mass media were new to most people other than the medical circles. Engineering students, though not included in the circles, have to be equipped with the ability to apply reasoning informed by knowledge to assess public health issues like this from the context of "The Engineer and Society". This paper reports a way of teaching the concepts of calculus using the compartmental modelling - the SIR (Susceptible, Infectious, and Removed) model - of which some epidemiological terms are used in the media. A pre-test set of questions is given to students before conducting a series of online calculus lessons, followed by a post-test after the students submit their technical reports. Student’s feedback on the contextual learning of calculus is collected and discussed. The results demonstrate that the engineering student's prior knowledge on the epidemiological terms presented in the media are really low but gained significant increment after the specially-designed lessons. Open feedback from students indicates that in general are appreciative of the effort of applying real-world context in a calculus course. Interestingly also, due to it not being an expected result, students are more appreciative of the fact that they learn how to use spreadsheet programs to model the pandemic.