Effect of Students’ Attendance on their Academic Performance in Some Engineering Courses at the United Arab Emirates

Abstract

The correlation between students’ attendance and their final grades was studied by many researchers in many universities across the world in a number of specializations.  The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of absence on engineering students’ performance in general engineering courses and more specifically in fundamental courses that are provided solely by the Mechanical Engineering Department since there had been a substantial lack of studies involving them. In order to do so, a sample size of over 8000 students from the United Arab Emirates University UAEU was collaborated for this study with a main objective to conclude whether this relationship is significant or not. The data was generally collected over a period of five years, from 2013 to 2018. From the research conducted, the results showed that, students who do not attend class tend to perform worse on exams in engineering. Furthermore, the correlation between the student’s class attendance and student’s final grade is noteworthy and there is a strong correlation between them. Equally important, such low students’ academic performance reflects negatively to the course learning outcomes.