FIRST-YEAR ENGINEERING STUDENTS AT REYKJAVIK UNIVERSITY: RELATION BETWEEN CLASS ATTENDANCE AND FINAL EXAM GRADE

Modern technology, such as online digital tools, enables some students to gain their university degrees without ever attending onsite classes in person. However, showing up in person to classes and interacting with other students and instructors may be beneficial for the students’ academic performance in an active learning environment. At the Department of Engineering at Reykjavik University in Iceland, there are around 200 students enrolled in first-semester engineering courses every year. They enroll in 8 different study lines, and all students take the same four courses in the first 12-week autumn semester. The setup of the four courses is similar, all with 4x45 min lectures and 2x45 min tutorials every week. Attendance is not mandatory, but students can increase their course final grade if they attend a minimum number of tutorials on-site during the semester. In this study, a comparison was made to see if there is a relationship between attendance and the final exam grade the students get in the course final exam. The results indicate a positive relationship between these factors where the students receive generally around 10-20 more points (out of 100) in the final exam if they have attended the tutorials well. According to literature, this is generally the tendency for students in other universities, where related studies have been made.