Predicting Success in a First Year Engineering Course: The Role of Study Habits. Larry G. Richards *, Herbert C. Richards **, and Dana C. Sheridan**. *School ...
Session 11a7 Predicting Success in a First Year Engineering Course: The Role of Study Habits Larry G. Richards *, Herbert C. Richards **, and Dana C. Sheridan** *School of Engineering and Applied Science, **Curry School of Education University of Virginia Charlottesville, Va 22903 Abstract – What factors influence the success of engineering students in their first year courses? Our students have been selected to represent a very limited range of intellectual abilities; they have high SAT scores and good high school grades. Therefore any performance differences must be due to other factors. Others have studied the role of learning styles, attitudes, and personality traits. In this paper, we attempt to predict academic performance based on our students’ study habits.
the University of Virginia, and obtained SAT scores and grade point averages for the 69 students in their sample. They found that students who are more inquisitive and less distractible performed better in their classes, and that the effects of study habits were apparent even when the effects of academic aptitude were controlled.
Design of this study
Every year we admit “ the best and the brightest” to the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia. Based on their SATs, high school GPAs and school/extracurricular activities, they are a group of bright, hard working, disciplined, and motivated students ready to master a complex technical field. THEN….they arrive! Somehow, this homogeneous group of super-achievers is really quite variable. Some do well, others don’t. Most complain about the level of effort required to get through their first year courses. A few transfer from engineering to Arts and Sciences, some drop out of college altogether, others remain in the program with mediocre grades. Very few excel! Why? What has gone wrong? Why can’t we predict who will do well in engineering school, and who will not?
For the last two years, we have administered this index of study habits to all first year engineering students at the University of Virginia, and monitored their performance in a particular class (Engineering Concepts). The first year, all students completed both forms (test and homework) of the survey early in the semester and then completed the test form again late in the course. The following year we administered the ERISH only once during the course. In this paper, we address three questions: Do the key results of Blumner and Richards replicate with a much larger sample size? Can we predict the academic performance of our students based on their study habits? And, are there differential patterns of factors of study based on gender for the engineering students in our sample? One reason for identifying deficiencies in study habits is to develop ways to improve them. We want to make students aware of strategies for optimal learning, and help them learn to use these habits for personal success.
Measuring study skills
References
Estes and Richards [1] developed a survey of study habits (ERISH) for use with high school and college students. Their study skills index measured three factors for both homework and test situations. Distractibility items assess the degree to which students report being unable to maintain their attention or concentrate on their task. Inquisitiveness items measure how well students try to make sense of the material they are studying - do they look for essential concepts or deeper meaning? Compulsiveness items assess the degree to which students attend to details and try to remember facts. Blumner and Richards [2] conducted a survey of study habits among a sample of first year engineering students at
1. Estes, T.H. and Richards, H.C. Habits of Study and Test Performance, Journal of Reading Behavior, Vol 17, 1985, 1-13. 2. Blumner, H.N. and Richards, H.C. Study Habits and Academic Achievement of Engineering Students, Journal of Engineering Education, Vol.86, No.2, April, 1997, 125132.
Introduction
0-7803-5643-8/99/$10.00 © 1999 IEEE November 10 - 13, 1999 San Juan, Puerto Rico 29th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference 11a7-5
