Class-attendance and Online-tests Results: Reflections for Continuous Assessment

ABSTRACT Sometimes class-attendance is a component (or requirement) to benefit from the continuous assessment. The objective of this study is to evidence that some students seem to be getting unfairly penalized for nonattendance. To address this issue, we provide alternative assessment solutions taking into account the different profiles of the students. This study is based on the performance in online tests undertaken in a subject of Financial Accounting taught in English in two groups at Valencia University (from Spain). This subject is especially important for International Business (IB) as managers make decisions based on financial information. In this course, students learn about the legal accounting framework, from a national and IB perspective (i.e., national standards and International Financial Reporting Standards). Difficulty of course contents, students’ study time, students’ university access mark, age, and class-attendance are determining factors of the mark obtained in online tests if we take into account all the students. However, for the students whose marks are the best and second best grades, only the difficulty of course contents, study time, age and parents’ studies are significant factors. Evidence is found that attendance improves online test performance significantly for the whole group of students, yet this factor is not significant considering only the best performing students. Our findings justify that the continuous assessment system should only require a specific level of attendance if the online test performance drops below a certain grade (for instance the second best grade). That way, these students would have an extra motivation to attend classes but better performing students who are keeping best and second grades in their online tests will not get penalized if classes are missed as long as they keep performing well.