Elsevier

Nurse Education Today

Volume 50, March 2017, Pages 36-41
Nurse Education Today

Nursing students' attendance at learning activities in relation to attainment and passing courses: A prospective quantitative study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2016.11.025Get rights and content

Highlights

  • There was a statistically significant relationship between attendance and exam pass.

  • Neither sex nor age was associated with students' attainment.

  • Each extra learning occasion attended increased the chance of an exam pass by 13%.

  • Encouraging students to increased attendance have potential to increase attainment

  • Recording of attendance might encourage students to increase their attendance.

Abstract

Background

Students' motivation and ways of engaging in their schoolwork are important for their performance, including passing exams. Attendance at learning activities has also been argued to be of major importance, although no causal relationship with passing exams has been established in nursing education.

Objectives

The aim of this study was to describe the impact of attendance at nonmandatory learning activities on attainment, in terms of passing or failing of exams, in nursing education courses including both mandatory and non-mandatory activities.

Design

A prospective quantitative design.

Setting

The nursing education programme at a Swedish university.

Participants

Nursing students (n = 361) from two courses and four classes within the nursing programme.

Methods

Attendance was registered at every non-mandatory teaching activity by asking the students to note their attendance on a list. Data such as sex, age, and whether the students had passed the exam were also collected for each course and each semester separately.

Results

Increased participation was associated with an increasing proportion of students passing the exam. The chance of passing the exam increased by 13% for every additional learning occasion attended. Logistic regression showed an OR of 5.4 for an attendance of 100%.

Conclusions

An increase in attendance gave a higher proportion of exam passes. Encouraging students to attend non-mandatory learning activities could be of value, and potentially contribute to an increased graduation rate for nursing students.

Section snippets

Background

One major concern in higher education is for students to pass exams and obtain their degrees. In Sweden this is important not least from an economic perspective, since higher education is publically funded and thus cost-free for all individual students who are citizens of either a state covered by the European Economic Area agreement or Switzerland (The Swedish Higher Education Act, 1992). Successful graduation of students is also important from the perspective of national staff development, as

Learning and Teaching

Views of knowledge are not uniform, in terms of either how knowledge can be acquired or how the process of learning is defined (Säljö, 2009). Learning is considered to consist of many different aspects, and its complexity is underestimated by many (Alexander et al., 2009, Säljö, 2009). As Phillips and Soltis (2009) have pointed out, different types of learning have differing needs, and hence there is also a need for different teaching methods. Varied teaching methods are also considered to be

Previous Research

Research shows that students' ways of engaging (or not engaging) in their education and learning is important for their performance and possibilities of passing tests and exams (Ainley, 1993). It has also been shown that students' motivation is a significant factor in their academic achievements (Mega et al., 2014). One review states that researchers agree there are clear associations between students' motivation and their achievements; the more autonomous motivation, the better students learn (

Aim

The aim of this study was to describe the impact of attendance at non-mandatory learning activities on attainment, in terms of passing or failing of exams, in nursing education courses including both mandatory and non-mandatory activities.

Methods

The study used a prospective quantitative design with both descriptive and analytical statistics.

Demography

A total of 361 students participated: 307 women and 54 men (15%). Over the four courses, all but three students signed the attendance list on at least one occasion. The students' mean and median age at the time of the course and the age range is given in total and divided by sex (Table 1).

Trend of Attendance During the Courses

The overall attendance trend showed the same pattern for all four courses: highest at the beginning of the course, and decreasing towards the end (Fig. 1). Attendance varied from 86% at the first occasion,

Method

The data material in this study consisted of students from four classes, roughly equal in size. The total number of students exceeded what was deemed necessary from the sample size calculations. The data collection was affected by bias, due to its voluntary nature. We do not know who chose to sign the attendance list and who did not. Students could freely decide not to sign the attendance list on any occasions, but all students except three (0,8%) signed on at least one non-mandatory occasion.

Conclusion

A statistically significant relationship was observed between attendance and the proportion of students passing the exam. An increase in attendance gave a higher proportion of exam passes. Neither sex nor age was shown to have any effect on students' attainment. Actions to encourage students to attend non-mandatory learning activities could be of value, and have the potential to contribute to an increase in the graduation rate for nursing students. The result points at possible targets for

Conflict of Interest

None.

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grants from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Acknowledgements

We thank all the students who participated in the study, as well as our teaching colleagues who helped us distribute the attendance lists during the courses.

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