EFFECT OF CLASS ATTENDANCE ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

Abstract

Student attendance is one of the issues that most teachers in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) is facing today. Many colleges and universities have compulsory attendance policies while others have refrain from making it as such. Despite the different policies, higher education teachers believe that attendance has positive effect in academic performance. Non-attendance in class lecture is seen as one of the reasons for academic failure. This study aimed to find out the relationship between class attendance and academic performance of the L3 Omani undergraduate students in their English courses during the first semester of 2020-2021. The two English Language courses comprise 20 credit each to gauge students’ English proficiency, at least IELTS 6.0, as a general entry requirement to Level 4 of the undergraduate programme. The two courses are taught separately through lectures, seminar type and practical sessions based on the module descriptors prescribed by the affiliate university. Each module is delivered in two hours and fifteen minutes per week. Thus, it is expected that each student has to attend the teaching sessions for 11 weeks with a total of 24 hours complete attendance in one semester. Result revealed that almost 71% of the L3 Omani undergraduate students had accumulated poor attendance which is below the 70% required attendance as per the attendance policy of the college. The average absence of students in the two English modules is identical with a minimum of five absences in a semester. Further, the result revealed that there is a significant relationship in the class attendance on the student performance in the two English modules at 0.01 level of significance. Therefore, the null hypothesis “There is no significant relationship between students’ class attendance and academic performance”, is rejected. The mark and absence of the students have negative inverse correlation. It means that as the absence of the student increases, the mark also decreases of at least 1 mark. It is concluded that students’ class attendance is very critical in terms of learning as it affects students’ achievement. To address the issue, a holistic approach to engage students both within and outside the classroom is recommended. Article visualizations: