Can Australian Universities Take Measures to Increase the Lecture Attendance of Marketing Students?

Abstract

Lectures are a central element of traditional university learning, but Australian lecturers increasingly face very low levels of lecture attendance. A significant amount of research exists that investigates the drivers of lecture attendance. However, those studies typically study single factors in an isolated manner, thus overestimating the importance of individual factors. This study contributes to the understanding of lecture attendance (and nonattendance) by including a range of factors that potentially affect lecture attendance simultaneously, thus accounting for possible interactions between factors and identifying the key drivers of lecture attendance. The study uses a survey among all students of an Australian university to compute a regression model with the probability of lecture attendance as the dependent variable. Results indicate that only four of the factors previously investigated are significant for marketing students (i.e., the difficulty of the subject, the quality of the lecture as perceived by the student, the quality of the student as indicated by his or her average mark, and the format of the lecture), which leaves little opportunity for Australian universities to improve attendance with simple measures. Instead, the data suggest that universities need to improve the quality of lectures to achieve better attendance levels. Lectures are a central element of traditional university learning, but Australian lecturers increasingly face very low levels of lecture attendance (Rodgers, 2001). A significant amount of research exists that investigates the drivers of lecture attendance. However, those studies typically study single factors in an isolated manner, thus overestimating the importance of individual factors. The present study contributes to our understanding of lecture attendance (and non-attendance) by including a range of factors that potentially affect lecture attendance simultaneously, thus accounting for possible interactions between factors and identifying the key drivers of lecture attendance. We used a survey among all students of an Australian university to compute a regression model with the probability of lecture attendance as the dependent variable.Our results indicate that only four of the factors previously investigated are significant for marketing students (that is, the difficulty of the subject, the quality of the lecture as perceived by the student, the quality of the student as indicated by their average mark, and the format of the lecture), which leaves little opportunity for Australian universities to improve attendance with simple measures. Instead, the data suggests that universities need to improve the quality of lectures to achieve better attendance levels. 2

Implementing a modified team-based learning strategy in the first phase of an outcome-based curriculum – Challenges and prospects

“…The majority of research into lecture attendance focuses on the reasons students do not attend lectures, assuming that reversing such conditions might increase attendance (Friedman et al 2001;Kottasz 2005;Massingham & Herrington 2006). For example, poor quality lecturing is one of the most common reasons cited for nonattendance at lectures (Dolnicar et al 2009). In response, research highlights the need to enhance the pedagogical skills of lecturers; Massingham and Herrington (2006), for example, suggest that today's students require a more student-centred approach.…”

MyWallMate: An Investigation into the use of Mobile Technology in Enhancing Student Engagement

“…Whilst all aspects are important, the influence of behavioural factors on student engagement is evidenced in part by strong correlations between attendance and attainment (Burd and Hodgson 2006;Colby 2005;Field 2012; Krause and Armitage 2014;van Schalkwyk et al 2010). In spite of this, attendance remains an issue within higher education and has been the subject of numerous investigations, including from the UK (Burd and Hodgson 2006;Field 2012), Europe (Landin and Pérez 2015), USA (Friedman et al 2014), South Africa (van Schalkwyk et al 2010) and Australia (Dolnicar et al 2009). …”

Development of an integrated GIS and land use planning course: impacts of hybrid instructional methods

“…Although only 6% student had a part-time status in this research, there is a growing concern in Australian universities about the absenteeism from classes that adversely affects student performance (Rodgers, 2002). Research has shown that the level of class attendance varies between 7% and 70% in Australia (Dolnicar, Kaiser, Matus, & Vialle, 2009). In addition, according to the Manual of Policies and Procedure at QUT, attendance is not normally compulsory and cannot be a part of assessment items to force attendance (Queensland University of Technology [QUT], 2011).…”