Students’ views and correlation regarding performance and attendance for a first year engineering cohort.

Abstract

This paper presents a case study to assess the students’ views and correlation between attendance to lectures, laboratories and seminars and their performance in terms of final results. The population is composed by a group of first year undergraduate students at the department of Design and Engineering, Bournemouth University, in an Engineering Design unit. Attendance was monitored for a number of 19 students over one academic year (2016-2017). Students’ views regarding the impact of some factors - such as clear expectations, content easy to understand, student collaboration and interaction, peer-pressure, and to be seen by the lecturer – on assessment performance have been surveyed. This data was obtained from a Likert-scale survey ran over a population of 10 students in the 2017-2018 academic year. The data that correlates final marks with attendance (laboratory, lectures and seminars) was analysed and indicates a strong least-squares fit correlation between attendance and final marks, with a coefficient of correlation R2=0.78 when plotting final marks vs overall attendance. Student view, which was also considered as an important aspect of this study, convey the benefits of attending the lectures and quantify some of the factors mentioned above including a minimum-maximum attendance rate for a good grade (first-class) or just a pass mark. Students perceive that the two main reasons for attending lectures are that, firstly, it makes it easier to understand the content and, secondly, they can get clear expectations on what they need to prepare and focus on.