Spare me the lecture!

Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn by simply sitting in a classroom listening to the teacher. However, many lecture based classes are restricted to students passively listening to the teacher. Thus, is there any reason for students to attend classes? Is regular attendance associated with exam scores in a lecture based course? To answer these questions, we determined the relationship between attendance and exam scores for our undergraduate exercise physiology class of 29 students. Attendance was recorded in each class. Although encouraged, attendance was not required and did not factor into the final grades. Exams consisted of multiple‐choice questions. Grades were calculated on 4, l‐h exams and a 2‐h final exam. A linear regression analysis between the percentage of points scored and absences for each student was calculated. There was a small decrease in score with an increase in the number of absences. Based on the maximum possible score of 978 points, the average student with perfect attendance made 782 points (80%, the intercept), and each absence was associated with an average decrease of 9.78 points (1.09%, the slope). Some students were absent frequently but scored above the class average, while others attended many classes but scored below the class average. This large individual variation resulted in a small statistical correlation (correlation coefficients 0.153). In fact, the final grade did not reflect the average days of attendance. Thus regular attendance was helpful in a statistical sense but was not the sole factor in learning exercise physiology.