Correlation between Lecture Attendance and Assessment Scores

Community Dentistry in the old undergraduate curriculum is presented mainly by way of lectures and tutorials. Apart from involvement in outreach programmes there is no other clinical involvement linked to this course. Despite not being compulsory, attendance of learning sessions is perceived to be important in mastering the learning content of this course. Objectives: The objective of this study was to investigate a possible correlation between lecture attendance and assessment scores for undergraduate dental students over the full 18 month duration and final assessment of the course in Community Dentistry. Methods: Attendance of lectures by students was monitored by way of attendance registers. Attendance was correlated with scores for all assessments during the duration of the course. Data was analysed by Pearson correlation coefficient (r) for individual questions and final scores for each assessment. Results: For individual questions correlations varied from negative (r=-0.45) to positive (r=0.41) and from weak negative (r=-0.15) to positive (r=0.47) for the four assessments during the course. No correlation (r=0.02) could be indicated for the year mark compared to total attendance for the course, but a weak negative correlation (r=-0.19) was found between the examination mark and total attendance. Conclusions: It must be recognised that some students learn from attending lectures, whereas others may derive little benefit from them and prefer mastering the course content by self-study methods. Although lecture attendance should be recommended, it mustn’t be regarded as the only factor affecting student performance. In the new undergraduate dental curriculum content of the course Dental Public Health will be presented as a hybrid between lectures and problem-based learning, where combined with continuous and regular modular assessment, a better correlation might be found between attendance and assessment scores.