(133) Students’ engagement with online learning system and its effect on their final grades

Objective : To correlate student engagement, defined as the time spent using online learning management system BlackBoard (BB) and final grades.

Methods: Final grades and student engagement for students was recorded for six courses in the first semester and five courses in the second semester. The correlation between time spent on BB and the final grades was estimated for each course. Using a regression model the effect of time spent on BB on the final grades of students was estimated. The lower and upper 5 percentile of class engagement and the average grades of these groups was identified.

Results: Existing data from 2022-2023 P1 year were collected de-identified and analyzed. Student’s engagement in each class in the Spring semester was greater (74.66 hours) than the Fall semester (59.01 hours) with a corresponding increase in the average grade performance from Fall (82.39%) to Spring (89.90%). Students engaging with coursework in the lower 5 percentile for student engagement led to failing grades in 7 of 11 courses.

Conclusions: There are correlation data between student engagement with online learning systems and course performance. Moving forward we intend to have student success personnel use these data to communicate the effort required to help poor performing students improve academically.