Relationship between Gender, Year Levels, Assignment Completion and Academic Achievement for College Students

Abstract

In order to effectively enhance students' learning, doing assignments is an accepted practice of improving content knowledge and self-regulated skills. However, individual differences may impact students' assignment behaviors. This study examined the relationship between specific assignment variables (i.e. amount of assignment completed, time spent on assignment), gender and grade level. The participants were 786 undergraduate students from five universities in Thailand. A two-way analysis of variance showed that differences of gender and year levels significantly affected the amount of assignments completed and time spent on assignments. The female students completed significantly more assignments and had more time spent on assignment than the male students. For year level differences, freshman complete more amount of assignments than other students (sophomore, junior and senior). On the other hand, junior and senior students spent more time on assignments than sophomores. Using a hierarchical regression analysis, gender and year levels were significantly associated with academic achievement. Moreover, the results revealed that the number of assignments completed was a strongest predictor on academic achievement and had positive associations with academic achievement after controlling gender and year level variables. Our findings then suggest there are differences between gender and undergraduate year levels in terms of assignment completion which may then affect students' learning outcome.