Does class attendance still matter?

This paper presents a study on the impact of class attendance on academic performance in a second year Electronics Engineering course module with online notes and no mandatory class attendance policy. The study shows that class attendance is highly correlated to academic performance, despite the availability of online class notes. In addition, there is significant correlation between class attendance and non-class contact with the lecturer and between student performance in the first year of university study and current academic performance and class attendance. However, there is no correlation between pre-university academic performance and current class attendance and academic performance. The study finds no gender bias in either class attendance or academic performance. Lastly, this being a course module open to students following different degree programmes, the study finds that a student’s choice of degree programme has no impact on class attendance and academic performance in this particular course module.