Does Laboratory–Theory Assessment Correspondence Differ Across First-Year Engineering Degree Cohorts?

Laboratory practices in engineering education, and particularly first-year Physics laboratories, are traditionally considered a cornerstone for acquiring technical competencies. However, this study examines whether the correspondence between laboratory and theoretical-exam performance is uniform across student cohorts. We present a quantitative analysis of 477 student performance observations from the Universitat Politècnica de València across three degree programs with different aggregate admission profiles: Telecommunications Engineering (GITST), Agricultural Engineering (GIAMR), and Forestry Engineering (GIFMN). The methodology focuses on thematic course units designed under the established framework of constructive alignment, with GIAMR and GIFMN providing the closest within-study comparison because the same course is taught in both programs by the same teaching staff, with shared laboratory activities and procedures and jointly administered assessments. For GITST, only the laboratory and written partial-exam outcomes corresponding to the Magnetism and Induction thematic unit were analyzed, whereas GIAMR and GIFMN contributed separate assessment pairs for the two thematic units. GIAMR Partial 1 showed a positive association that reached the significance threshold under both Pearson’s chi-squared and Fisher’s exact tests (OR = 2.53; Pearson p=0.039; Fisher p=0.046). GIAMR Partial 2, the GITST pairing, and GIFMN Partial 1 showed positive but non-significant associations, whereas GIFMN Partial 2 showed a pronounced inverse descriptive pattern that did not reach the significance threshold under Fisher’s exact test (p=0.062). In this study, “curricular decoupling” denotes a weakening or loss of correspondence between laboratory and theoretical-exam outcomes; the observational design does not establish that aggregate entry profiles caused the observed differences.