Understanding the impact of attendance and participation on academic achievement.

Abstract

Although it is widely believed that attendance is directly and positively related to academic achievement, the literature presents mixed findings. Moreover, there is a paucity of research on the potential role of engagement, particularly student participation, in explaining this relation. The present study investigated whether in-class participation mediated the relation between attendance and academic achievement, particularly in the context of a small American liberal arts college. Students' final cumulative exam scores were used as an unconfounded outcome measure for students' learning success (i.e., academic achievement). Our results demonstrated a significant indirect effect of attendance on academic performance through participation, with a point estimate of .08 (SE ϭ .02, 95% CI [.06, .12]). Notably, the direct effect of attendance on academic performance became nonsignificant (B ϭ .03), t(.71), p ϭ .48, when controlling for participation, suggesting a strong mediation effect. These results suggest that students' in-class participation mediates the positive relation between attendance and academic achievement reported in the literature. Although caution should be taken when generalizing these results, as the data were collected in a particular educational context, our results offer potential implications for course instructors. The implications include designing courses and assessment schemes, as well as adopting active learning approaches, to encourage students' in-class participation.

Prediction of Undergraduate Student’s Study Completion Status Using MissForest Imputation in Random Forest and XGBoost Models

“…Next, the number of total semesters and active semesters is related to students' attendance. Attendance has a significant indirect effect on academic performance (Kim, Shakory, Azad, Popovic, & Park, 2020). Students' age is also one of the features that most researchers agree on when predicting students' academic achievement in higher education (Alturki, Hulpuș, & Stuckenschmidt, 2020).…”

Participation is Predictive of Individual, but Not Group, Work in the Context of a Blended General Education Course

“…Since blended learning is becoming more of a norm in higher education (Johnson et al, 2016), it is of growing interest to examine the impact of various factors on students' academic achievement in this learning context, particularly factors that students can control, such as their participation in a given course. Past research on face-to-face instructional delivery demonstrates that students' participation is positively related to their achievement in a course (Rocca, 2010), and that participation mediates the positive association found between attendance and achievement (Kim et al, 2019). The extant literature on the relation between participation and achievement in the context of blended learning is mixed; whereas some studies demonstrate a positive association between these two variables (Rubio et al, 2018), other research shows that only some forms of online participation are significantly related to student achievement (Cheng & Chau, 2016).…”

Structured peer mentoring improves academic outcomes and complements project-based learning in an introductory research methods and statistics course.

“…In addition, supplemental instruction and drop-in tutoring requires that students have the time to take advantage of these resources, but often our students are at work, caring for a family member, or commuting. Kim et al (2019) suggests that participation in lecture sessions mediates the relationship between attendance and This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.…”