Title: Classroom Observation on Discrepancies of Student Performance
By Gjergji Culli
Some students more than others are better prepared academically and have greater confidence in their ability to succeed. At the same time, what they do during college—the activities in which they engage and the company they keep—can become the margin of difference as to whether they persist and realize their educational goals. Some of them, because of lack of ability to adopt to postsecondary education environments fail to be as successful as they thought they would be or even worse, drop out or drag on and on through years in college. In postsecondary education, it is not enough to put the efforts; it also is about how to apply and dispatch these efforts.
Generally it is expected that student spend two hours on self-study for every hour spent in class, especially at the postsecondary education level and those hours should properly scheduled and distributed among courses student is attending without any interference. The key here is not only scheduling but also committing to attending the schedule and in efficient way. On the other hand, if a student is a slow reader or have other study problems, he/she may need to allocate more study time. Study schedule need to be constructed carefully so it doesn’t interfere with other activities; otherwise it is doomed from the beginning to be attended not as it was planned, or, at the best case, sporadically and in unorganized way (although it was labeled as planned).
Effective and successful study consists of more than merely memorizing facts. It requires knowledge and abilities of how to intellectually classified and use the gathered information. According to Crow Crow (1992) “…the effective habits of study include plan/place, a definite time table and taking brief and well organized notes.” According to Azikiwe (1998) “…study habits are the adopted way and manner, when a student plans his/her private readings, after classroom learning. So as to attain mastery of the subject.” In other words a premise for student success is the presence of managerial and organizational skills on the learner.
Student engagement is another indicator of student success that has received considerable attention in recent years regarding the matter how it can become more effective and more multi-beneficial to students.
Review is an important part of any educational program as concepts need to be reinforced before new ones are presented. It is important the teacher creates a plan for reviews in course and post it so students know about review schedule. This does a lot to build student confidence because they have a hard copy of what they should review and what sections of the course professor thinks and feels are most important. Reviewing topics frequently throughout the course will clarify the material they have entered and stored in brain. They can use the reviewing sessions to adjust materials and practices they have considered already learned. For learners, there are two types of reviews: reviewing what they did wrong in previous tests and tasks and reviewing as they study further topics in course, reviewing and refreshing the previously learned material that is related to the topic he/she is studding at the moment. Without adequate review, refreshing and recycle activities, student can make the assumption that they have “learned” material when in fact they have not had the time or opportunity to understand and remember what they have been learning.
Reviewing serves at least two major principles of student success and student performance: student involvement and getting feedback about the study process: how effective and beneficial it has been to the learner. In review sessions students can participate since the session is about something they have been preparing and inquiring; they will have a greater chance to ask questions and understand the answers than in the sessions when the material was a new topic to them.
These thoughts are based on the notes I have kept on student activities and progress for each
of students belonging to two groupings: (C+less) and and (B-more).
The interest was put on two main question related to improving the student performance, especially the performance of students falling into (C+less) grouping: how do the students of (C+less) group compare to the students of the other group, what do the student of (C+less) miss in their study preparations and what is their attitude about reviewing the previous material especially the material where they didn’t perform well in previous tasks.
The test and quiz questions were classified as NTQ, PTQ, and PTQ(DR)NTQ; marks were assigned to each one of the questions and data were collected regarding the student performance of both groups on above types of questions; the collected data then were used to compare how reviewing the previously learned and tested material affects (for each group separately) the performance on the next task (test)
The language:
(B_more) group = the group of students whose result in a particular test and quiz was equal to or more than B_
(C+less) group = the group of students whose result in a particular test and quiz was equal to or less than C+
NTQ = never tested question = question types that never been tested before for marking in other tests or quizzes; they were tested for the first time in final test
PTQ = previously tested question = question types that were previously tested for marking in previous tests or quizzes
PTQ(DR)NTQ = previously tested question directly related to never tested question = question types that were already tested for marking in previous tests or quizzes and that were directly related to never previously tested questions: mastering level achieved in solving the
How did the mastering of PTQ questions affected the performance on NTQ questions for the two groups? Is there any considerable difference in performance of NTQ questions between two groups?
The ratios used to compare the performance of (B-more) group students and (C+less) group students in PTQ and NTQ groupings of questions; also they are used to see how the performance in previous material tested in previous tasks (tests, assignments, quizzes) affect the performance in the future tasks (tests, assignments) for two groups.
A. R1 = PTQ %/NTQ % shows that, for (B_more) group, the average of ratios was 1.25. This further means that for PTQ questions the performance was better by a coefficient of 0.25 compared to NTQ questions. Although no big difference in performance for (B_more) group between two sets of questions, still this showed that performance on PTQ questions was better than that for NTQ questions: but the fact that the difference is small means that this group considers course preparation as a continuous task starting at the beginning of the course and continuing throughout the entire course all the way up to the end.
B. R1 = PTQ %/NTQ % shows that, for (C+ less) group, the average of ratios was 1.85. This further means that there is a difference in performance regarding the two sets of questions: PTQ and NTQ questions. So the performance on PTQ questions was much better than the performance on NTQ questions for the (C+less) group. This showed that especially for this group the level of performance in each question depended much on the matter whether the question was tested or not before; so whether the students had been tested on that type of question before or not mattered for this group; that probably means that students of this group needed more practice to experiment with NTQ questions. That doesn’t mean that these students didn’t have enough time to prepare for these types of questions: they had the same amount of time to prepare as the students in (B-more) had. Indeed it means that students of the (C+less) group needed to become more aware of their deficiencies and learn how to fix them; also that fact means that they didn’t master the previous material well to support them to get successfully through the NTQ questions.
C. Does the mastering level of previously tested questions directly related to the never previously tested questions [PTQ(DR)NTQ] affect conclusions 1) and 2)?
Did the mastering level of previously tested questions directly related to never previously tested questions affected the performance in never previously tested questions much more than mastering of all previous material (it doesn’t matter DR (directly related) or not DR to NTQ) of students? Or did the fact that NTQ questions were not previously tested affect considerably the results of FT?
R2 = PTQDRNTQ %PTQ % compares performance in PTQ(DR)NTQ questions with the performance in NTQ questions.
a) For (B-more) group the R2 is 1.00, on the average, which means that performance of previously tested questions directly related to never previously tested questions is rated on the same performance level as the performance on the previously tested question (all of them, it doesn’t matter DR (directly related) or not DR to NTQ) which means that for (B-more) group we cannot say that the level of mastering the previously tested questions directly related to never previously tested questions affected the performance on never previously tested questions much more than the level of mastering of previously tested question ( all of them).
b) For (C+less) group the R2 = PTQ(DR)NTQ %/PTQ % was 0.92. The difference with the ratio for (B-more) group (case a)) is only 0.08. So we can say that conclusion for a) holds in this case too (although we can be cautious here and consider a slight difference) but it seems that the general student preparation of this group is the major influence on the results.
4) Combining concussions A and Ca) we can say that for (B-more) group the fact that some questions of final test were never tested before didn’t affect a lot the final result of student performance.
5) Combining conclusions B and Cb) , we can conclude that, for (C+less) group of students the results in never previously tested questions of final test depended on the fact if they were related to previously tested questions or not.: students of this group performed better in the questions that were not brand new to them (brand new -never tested before). A first approach of the needed amount of improvement can be found from the ratio value 1.85, which means a 0.85 ratio coefficient of improvement is indeed in comparison with (B+more) group. This first approach of the coefficient of improvement is found by comparing the results of never tested questions with results of previously tested questions. What does a 0.85 coefficient of improvement means? In percentage value it means a coefficient of improvement of 85% value! This is a big value. Finding the reasons for this difference, individually for each student of this group, is the first step for narrowing the gap between the groups and making this value a low value.
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