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Class Attendance and Student Performance in Medical School Anatomy Education
Author(s) -
Fang Xiaoqian,
Olvera Nina,
Madrigal Karina
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.2019.33.1_supplement.442.15
Subject(s) - attendance , medical education , session (web analytics) , class (philosophy) , academic year , medicine , psychology , mathematics education , computer science , artificial intelligence , world wide web , economics , economic growth
Student academic performance in medical school is positively correlated to their success during their graduate medical education, as well as their career in the short term. Improving student academic performance is an essential part of educational research. A significant decline of classroom attendance in medical school has been noticed with the trend of non‐mandatory classes and the availability of lecture videos. In this study, we used the data collected in anatomy education to investigate the relationship between students' classroom attendance and academic performance. Since the attendance for lectures is optional, the attendance data was collected in the mandatory laboratory sessions by circulating an attendance sign‐in sheet or through an electronic application (TopHat). Students were divided into three groups, 1) students who attended the session less than the mandatory requirement, 2) students who attended all sessions, and 3) students who attended the session more than the mandatory requirement. This study included one‐hundred students, covering eight different modules, including both year 1 and year 2 medical students. We find that (a) group 3 always performed better than group 2 in written exams; (b) group 3 always performed better than group 2 in lab practical exams; (c) group 1 performed better in the beginning of the medical school study even though students attended mandatory lab sessions less frequently than their peers; (d) from the third module onwards, group 1 students started performing poorer than the other two groups and remained the same till the end of the second year. The main conclusion reached by this study was that classroom attendance positively correlates to student academic performance. This study highlights that student attendance can be used as a predictor to estimate student academic performance and can help educators identify and facilitate interventions for at‐risk students. This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .