Search

This article is an extension of a work in progress paper originally presented at the conference FiE 2020, Frontiers in Education by (Schirichian et al., 2020), as a result of Schirichian’s master’s in science dissertation. It studies the relations between academic performance, protection factors, life at university, and personal characteristics to understand how they influence students’ academic success in undergraduate engineering programs in Brazil. In this challenging environment, several students overcome these issues and graduate, which indicates that some protection structures allow students to face challenging situations and be successful in their studies. Current research studied the relationships between academic performance, self-efficacy, causal attributions, personal characteristics, and life at university, with a group of 30 students. Models were studied by combining the different variables and aspects evaluated in the research, and the findings show relationship between academic performance and: 1) self-efficacy, causal attributions, and personal characteristics (such as leisure activities, living with their parents, or college accommodations) and those who attended private schools during basic education; 2 protection factors self-efficacy and causal attributions with advancing in the program and the time of enrolment in the university; and 3) the dimensions initiation and persistence, success/internality and failure/internality, indicating that those who perceive themselves as playing a major role in their academic journey tend to have better outcomes. Further results show the influence of social inequalities, particularly for those students who declared themselves brown and who conducted their basic education in public schools (which are generally of lower quality than private ones in Brazil). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: From prior studies on models and strategies used to study the academic performance of university students, it is evident that none of them either evaluates T-shaped degrees or does so according to the profile of the students’ high school provenance. The study provided in this article employs a well-established model and strategy to show the monitoring of university students’ performance in the first academic year with the premise that their heterogeneity in terms of the modalities of their high school provenance may be a determining factor as regards their performance in the various disciplines on a T-shaped degree. Background: Universities are beginning to offer T-shaped degrees in response to the growing demand for professionals with this profile. The variety of disciplines taught on these degrees means that the students enrolled on them originate from various high school modalities, which implies a difference in their respective knowledge that may affect their performance. Research Questions: Are a student’s high school provenance modalities a determining factor in their performance in various disciplines on a T-shaped degree? Methodology: This study has employed the goal-oriented, context-aware, measurement, evaluation and monitoring strategy to monitor students’ performance on a Service Science, Management and Engineering degree. The five years of monitoring has made it possible to characterize students from the different modalities of provenance. Findings: It was possible to characterize the performance in the different high school modalities using the model attributes evaluated, with the objective of proposing instruments that could help improve the students’ performance when unsatisfactory indicator results are detected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]