Student Engagement as the Factor of Math Mastery in University: The Relationship Between Social Factor and Learning Practices

The main aim of math teaching at the higher level is to form students’ competency to prepare them for other courses that require mathematical skills and professional task solving. The challenge today is to develop student engagement in math learning. Thus, this study examined the relationship between social factors, student learning practices, and student engagement in math learning. A survey through questionnaires was distributed to 284 bachelor's degree students at a private university in Malaysia. For data analysis, descriptive statistics and Structured Equation Modeling were applied. The results obtained revealed that there were significant relationships between: a) teaching practices and attentive listening, note-taking, working on in-class problems, b) peer influence and attentive listening, c) parental involvement and working on in-class problems, and the amount of homework completed. The results also show that seating location, attentive listening, note-taking, working on in-class problems, and homework completion have a significant relationship with student engagement in math learning.

Academic performance, class attendance and seating location of university students in practical lectures

The question of where students sit in a classroom has been widely studied under different approaches since the beginning of the 20th century. In this study, the data related to the seating location of the students in the computer-aided design practice lecture at the university were recorded and arranged, to analyse their seating preferences, their consistency throughout the course and their relationship with several factors related to academic performance, class attendance, and punctuality. In general, it was observed that, students are reluctant to seat on the first row, and that the most punctual students chose to occupy the places in the first rows, closer to the lecturer (r = 0.35, p = 0.015), although this had no impact on academic performance. While the following was indeed correlated with the attendance rate: those students who attended the most class achieved a better academic performance which was reflected in the final mark (r = 0.38, p = 0.007). No difference was observed in any aspect between male and female students.