Class attendance and performance, which comes first?

Abstract

In a newly introduced elective course of Wind Engineering, an analysis was carried out to investigate the relationship between students’ class attendance and their likely performance before and after the course. During the study, class attendance was not mandatory and its records were noted without the knowledge of the students. Course material contents were uploaded online for students’ access, of which the statistics of the access frequency were also track recorded. Results have indicated that students with likely high performance before the course are associated with higher class attendance. They would not access online course materials as much as the low attendance group, but they generally would achieve better performance afterwards. For the group who come to class less often, they are seen to attain relatively lower grades in academic performance. However, their performance is shown to improve with their frequency to access lecture materials online.