Truancy effect and time-spent-in-exam on students’ marks in university: a case study

Abstract

This study investigates student performance in higher education, focusing on truancy impact on digital electronics course scores and proposing the integration of time-spent-in-exam (TSE) as a metric for assessing time management skills. Conducted at the Higher School of Technology of Safi, the research compared attendee and absentee scores across Bloom’s Taxonomy levels. Absentees generally had lower success rates, except for the remembering level. Discriminant Function Analysis (DFA) identified student clusters based on responses, with an 80.5% success rate in classification by absenteeism frequency. The study explored two hypotheses on exam performance linked to TSE. The first showed limited benefits, leading to inflated marks, while the second, using a dynamic TSE-exam mark formula, demonstrated significant benefits. Importantly, incorporating TSE discouraged cheating, highlighting its value in educational contexts to enhance student performance.