Attendance, performance and culture Experience of the School of Engineering, Nazarbayev University - An update

This paper investigates the relationship between attendance and overall academic performance of students at a newly established research focused university located in Central Asia. The first intake of the School of Engineering at Nazarbayev University consisted of 138 students: 88 male and 50 female. Student attendance was noted at every session during the entire academic year. Final marks for all modules and grade point averages (GPAs) of the students for the fall and spring semesters were analyzed to ascertain the influence of attendance on grades and overall performance of students. Moreover the data sets were separated by gender and also analyzed. The analysis shows that correlation coefficients of attendance data and final marks are positive for thirteen out of a total of fourteen modules. It was observed that attendance data and GPAs have better correlation in fall semester than in spring semester. Attendance vs. GPA correlation for male students is lower than for female students. The fact that there was less number of female students than male students and the same cultural background (leading to streamlined perceptions of the examined sample) should be taken into account.