Factors Affecting Students Academic Performance Areview
Factors Affecting Students Academic Performance Areview
Factors Affecting Students Academic Performance Areview
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Abstract
Students' Academic Performance is vital for assessing a student's standing within a
university. It makes it possible for academic staff, educational administrators, and decision-
makers to precisely evaluate students taking various courses throughout a semester.
Additionally, it served as a cautionary tale for the students to assess their performance level
and make subsequent improvements. According to official statistics in Oman, the number of
students who don't graduate on time and college dropouts rise dramatically yearly. These
problems hindered Oman's higher education mission. All stakeholders in Oman's higher
education system must pay attention to these statistics. The main objective of our paper is to
identify what factors most influence students' academic performance. Systematic literature
review is used as the technique to identify the factors. This paper presents a comprehensive
review of the factors affecting student academic performance. The results revealed that low
entry grades, family support, accommodation, student gender, previous assessment grade,
student internal assessment grade, GPA, and students' e-learning activity are the most
significant factors influencing students' academic performance. This finding would be helpful
for other researchers interested in academic performance issues such as modeling the
predicting students’ academic performance.
I. Introduction
Information plays key role in many areas in our life. Some of these areas are the
management, planning and evaluation of an education systems. An education management
information system is a centralized warehouse for the collecting the data, processing,
reviewing, and reporting of educational information and data including the institute and
relevant faculties, students, instructors, and employees. An information system must not only
strive to gather, store, and process information, but must also assist in the formulation of the
policies related to the education, and their management, and evaluation. There was greater
interest in highly relevant parameters such as students’ participation rates, students’ attendance,
rate of students’ retention, the level of students' academic achievement and issues with
discipline [1].
Higher Education Institution’s (HEIs) has reached the era of big data [2]. It is one of
the realms in which data volume, variety and velocity coexist. In HEIs, huge quantities of data
Published/ publié in Res Militaris (resmilitaris.net), vol.12, n°6, Winter 2022
sets data are collected and generated on a daily from various sources and in different formats
involving their students and the education operations [3]. HEIs are work in an extremely
competitive and complex environments.
Academia and IT industry are workings with number of devices and systems, and these
are generating and collecting massive information and data which rapidly exceeds the boundary
range [3]. In addition, a huge volume of data is generated by student information systems (SIS)
which involve student general data and students’ academic records including different activities
done by the students and teachers while using various educational technologies such as learning
management system (LMS). Library records, admission files, financial statements,
administrative processes, educational and quality development processes, learning activities,
course information including course curriculum, course objectives, course materials, course
examination results, course activities are all generate huge data as well [2],[3].
The rapid and exponential growth in educational data, as well as the problem of
applying that data to improve the overall quality of the education system, is one of the key
challenges that educational institutes are confronting these days. As a result, these issues faced
by learners and students can be solved by good educational data analysis, which includes
having insights or testing hypotheses or models on a dataset [4].
Oman as a society does suffer from low academic performance among its students
because English is taught as a second language in the country. Oman's post-secondary and
higher education institutions offer instruction in English as the primary language of instruction.
In accordance with the findings of the studies on English Language Teaching in Oman, the vast
majority of students who graduate from high school (grade 12) and go on to various public and
private higher education institutions are unable to use language effectively and appropriately
in order to meet their social, personal, academic, and professional needs. Considering that the
majority of Omani high school graduates have a limited understanding of the higher education
system's expectations, it is not surprising to see students who are uninterested in participating
in classroom discussions, find the subject/course boring, are frequently absent, and obtain low
grades in exams [5].
The Sultanate of Oman has been supporting higher education through scholarships in
order to provide the industry with quality manpower. Over the last two decades, Oman has seen
a significant increase in the number of higher educational institutions as well as student
enrollment. However, this mission has run into an unanticipated problem: an increase in the
number of students dropping out of institutions. In 2014-2015, more than 10,000 students
dropped out of college, indicating that an average of 7,000 students leave higher education in
Oman each year. According to official statistics, college dropout is a serious problem that has
hampered the government's higher education mission in Oman. The statistics show how serious
the problem is, and they demand special attention from all stakeholders in Oman's higher
education system [5].
Based on that, it become an essential to investigate on the factors that affecting the
students’ academic performance. This paper is going to identify the factors that might influence
on students’ academic performance.
The following is a breakdown of the paper's structure. Section 2 delves the search
methodology, while Section 3 delves into the factors that influence students' academic
performance. Finally, Sections 4 and 5 outline the discussion and conclusion of this literature
review.
Res Militaris, vol.12, n°6, Winter 2022 285
I. Methodology
We used a standard systematic literature review (SLR) method in this paper, which
follows the guidelines proposed by [7]. SLR has many advantages over unstructured and
unreliable literature reviews, as it is more likely to be considered trustworthy and objective [8].
Furthermore, information gathered from SLRs is extremely trustworthy because it was derived
from a variety of sources. SLR is divided into three phases: planning, conducting, and reporting
[7]
A. Research Questions
Our objective in this paper is to answer the following question:
B. Search Strategy
The search source for manuscripts used in the research is English-language academic
journals only. We searched several databases, including Science Direct, Scopus, IEEE Xplore,
ACM Digital Library and Google Scholar. The search looked at research articles between 2014
to 2020. The search string (“student” AND "predict*" AND "Academic performance" AND
"factors" AND “review” OR “survey”) was used to search for articles. For reliable search
results, the Boolean operator "AND", and "OR" was employed as above. About 3,810 results
was found in the search. While exploring those papers, most of the papers were focused on
prediction methods rather than the factors. Based on that, we have deeply explored and selected
the papers focus on the factors to achieve our objective.
The most research papers found in the literature, they revealed that the student's factors
which affect the student academic performance are gender, high school grade, student's
parental education, financial background, medium of teaching, student's family status, living
location, students' previous semester marks, seminar performance class, test grade, assignment
performance, attendance in class and lab work, general proficiency, Interest in particular
course, Study behaviour, Engage Time and Family Support for study, previous schools marks,
admission type, accommodation type, parent's occupation, parent's qualification. All of these
attributes are divided into categories such as personal, family, academic, institutional, and
social. The most significant personal attributes of the student are taken into account, such as
gender, age, interest in the study, admission type, and study behavior
[10],[11],[10],[12],[13],[14]. Family attributes such as parent's education, occupation, family
income, family status, and study support are also considered important for academic prediction
[11],[14],[15]. Previous school marks are taken into account for academic attributes such as
high school grade, students' previous semester marks, class test grade, seminar performance,
assignment performance, attendance in class and lab work [15],[11],
Res Militaris, vol.12, n°6, Winter 2022 286
[10],[16],[13],[14],[17],[18], and institutional attributes such as medium of instruction,
accommodation type, infrastructure, water and toilet facilities, teaching methodology, and
transportation facilities [18],[11],[19], [16],[15],[13],[20],[21] .
According to [3], various studies in different countries show that several factors,
including individual factors, interactions within colleges, and institutional factors, are
associated with student dropout rates and poor academic performance in Higher Education
Institutions (HEIs). In this study, [22] have been evaluated a variety of factors, including
student gender, finance source (government or self-funded), and secondary school grades (first,
second, or third). However, factors such as school scores and faculty subjects or program
curriculums are the primary causes of poor student academic performance and dropout.
Reference [8] have examined the factors that affect the students' academic performance
and students' dropout from HEIs. The results revealed that the students with the lowest entry
grades and those who were farther away from family support (Living away from their families)
are the two main factors that affect the students in academic performance and dropout [9] as
well as family expenditure and income are affecting students’ academic performance
[23],[24],[25].
Institutional factors, internal factors, contextual factors, and student factors are all
important factors that influence students' academic performance and dropout [5],[26],[27].
According to [27], the findings revealed that institutional factors such as student-staff ratio and
the university’s teaching quality plays a significant role in low academic performance and
student dropout. Furthermore, the student-to-staff ratio has a positive effect on low-performing
students' academic performance and dropout rates. In addition, there is a link between staff
quality and dropout rates. Furthermore, the findings revealed the significance of contextual
factors that contribute to student dropout rates, such as university accommodation.
Furthermore, [23] referred to the students' legacy data, based on their perspective and
other research that the students' legacy data is a significant factor to track any student’s
performance, as these data could help to understand the background of the student in any
course.
Based on the above figure, we have classified the factors found in the literature in two
Res Militaris, vol.12, n°6, Winter 2022 287
different categories. One is internal factors and the second is external factors. The internal
factors include personal and psychological factors. While the external factors include
academic, social, economic, and demographic. Accordingly, some factors have been selected
and explained below.
One of the most significant factors in students' poor academic performance and dropout
is their secondary school scores, according to [22] research. There is a lower dropout rate
among students with higher grades than among students with lower grades.
B. Program Type
According to some HEIs enrolment rules all potential students may choose several
programs during the application process. Students must indicate the priority for each program
separately. The curricula of some programs contain such subject as physic, mathematic and
chemistry. The students' face some difficulties in such courses which lead them to fail in the
exams and activities. It means that although students had motivation to study, but the study
process was not what they had expected. As a result, the poor academic performance leads the
students to leave the universities and colleges [22].
C. Family Support
The assistance that students receive from their families is critical for a smooth transition
into college life, especially in the first year. Both theoretical and empirical evidence point to
the importance of the emotional and practical support that comes from having close friends and
family members as a basic human need. In order for people to thrive and achieve their utmost
psychological well-being, they need strong, supportive family relationships. As a result, people
tend to put their trust in their families and close relationships when they need it the most. Family
support has been linked to lower levels of emotional distress, self-esteem, and academic self-
efficacy among university students. It was found that students who received social support from
their families were more likely to be satisfied with their lives, have a positive mood, and have
a negative mood than those who didn't [9]. As a result, the students should have a full support
from their families and to be around them while they study as it has a positive impact in the
students’ academic performance.
Furthermore, [23], family factors, such as family expenditure and income, as well as
individual student data, were used to determine the impact on student performance. They came
Res Militaris, vol.12, n°6, Winter 2022 288
to the conclusion that excessive rental and health expenses had a negative impact on the overall
environment, which in turn had an impact on student performance. A student's inherent
characteristic of emotional stability was found to be a significant predictor of their academic
performance.
D. Accommodation
According to [27] research, there is a negative and statistically significant relationship
between university accommodation and student performance. According to the findings of
several studies, students' social circumstances, particularly the issue of accommodation, have
a significant impact on the student’s ability to remain in college and succeed academically.
Reference [29] finds that students who have some form of accommodation graduate on average
more quickly than students who do not have any form of accommodation.
E. Student Gender
According to [27], they found that there is a significant relationship between student
low academic performance and dropout with the gender. Males are more prone to drop out than
females. As per this study, the findings revealed that gender has a strong relationship with
student dropout.
H. GPA
GPA has a high influence on predicting students' academic performance, so many
researchers have used it to analyze students' performance. If students have a low GPA in their
first and second years of study, they will most likely be unable to complete their studies within
the study plan. The reason for this is that they may have to carry any failed papers over to the
next semester, extending their study time [40].
IV. Conclusion
This paper identified the factors influencing students' academic performance. Students
who perform well in university are more likely to finish their studies and graduate, and vice
versa. If the prediction turns out to be accurate, the administration of the university will be
better able to identify the students who are not likely to continue on their current path and
devise strategies to help those students improve their performance so that they can eventually
graduate from the university. The factors were identified and discussed in this paper. The
findings of this study, when taken together, academic assessment factors relating to students'
previous and current academic performance were very important and might help in predicting
their academic performance. Finally, the significance of this work is found in the intention to
assist and help other researchers in identifying the factors. It will also assist lecturers,
administration, and decision makers to understand the significant factors that may affect the
students in their study. The results revealed that low entry grades, family support,
accommodation, student gender, previous assessment grade, student internal assessment grade,
GPA, and students' e-Learning activity are the most significant factors influencing students'
academic performance.
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