A Correlation Study between Engagement in Learning and Academic

Achievement among College Students

Steven Fernando Zahri

, Fiftinova, and Muhammad Yunus

English Education Study Program, Universitas Sriwijaya, Indonesia

Keywords: Students’ engagement in learning, academic achievement.

Abstract: This study was carried out to find the correlation between students’ engagement in learning and their

academic achievement. The sample was selected from the students of the Faculty of Teacher Training and

Education, English Education Study Program in one state university in Palembang, South Sumatra year

2015, 2016, and 2017. A total number of two hundred and thirty-one students were selected. This study

provided not only the correlation between those variables but also the survey of students’ engagement in

learning and the academic achievement of the students as well as the contribution of the students’

engagement to their academic achievement. The instruments used in this study were questionnaire and

documentation. The results of the study highlighted that 90% of the students actively contributed to the

learning process while the rest 10% were passive students. Then, the academic achievement of the students

fell mostly in middle achiever for 84% which is between >2.67 - < 3.66. Moreover, there was a very weak

correlation between those two variables and a small contribution of the students’ engagement to their

academic achievement for about 3%.

1 INTRODUCTION

Students’ engagement in learning or also called as

classroom participation has been a well-known

matter for decades. In general, students are divided

into two types, active and passive. Passive students

may not interact, share their insight, or communicate

and those will influence other participants even the

most enthusiastic one (Emelo, 2013). Therefore,

teachers need to make passive students become

active and active students maintain their activeness.

Moreover, in education, students’ engagement refers

to the degree of attention, curiosity, interest,

optimism, and passion that students show when they

are learning or being taught, which extends to the

level of motivation they have to learn and progress

in their education (Student Engagement, 2016). The

concept of student engagement is predicated on the

belief that learning improves when students are

inquisitive, interested, or inspired, in other words

being active and that learning tends to suffer when

students are bored, dispassionate, disaffected, or

otherwise disengaged, in other words being

passive. Stronger student engagement or improved

student engagement are common instructional

objectives expressed by educators (Student

Engagement, 2016).

Furthermore, Khandai and Illahi (2015) highlight

that academic achievement occupies ‘a very

important place in education as well as in learning

process and has become an index of child’s future in

this highly competitive world’ (p.1). Therefore, the

act of the students who only come and go is

unfavorable because the students’ performance

(academic achievement) takes a crucial part in

producing the best quality graduates who will likely

become a great leader and manpower for the

development of the country’s economic and social

(Ali et al., 2009).

Although every type of students, passive or

active, in the classroom, can get grades above

average or so, Biggs and Tang (2011) further

suggests that active learners are able to obtain a

further level of engagement and thus a higher level

of cognitive learning in their academic work. As it is

suggested that a lot of scholars consider class

participation as an evidence of active learning or

engagement that benefits learning, critical thinking,

writing, appreciation of cultural differences, time

management and interpersonal, listening and

speaking skills (Petress, 2006). Therefore, active

Fernando Zahri, S., Fiftinova, . and Yunus, M.

A Correlation Study between Engagement in Learning and Academic Achievement among College Student.

DOI: 10.5220/0009996000002499

In Proceedings of the 3rd Sriwijaya University International Conference on Learning and Education (SULE-IC 2018), pages 91-96

ISBN: 978-989-758-575-3

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

students will highly become the best graduates from

the learning outcomes as they are supported with

great result both in academic achievement and in

academic performance. This is in line with the

findings of Biggs and Tang in 2011 who found

students’ participation in the teaching and learning

environment leads to better learning outcomes.

However, there is something to be taken into

account that even though it is widely claimed that

active students’ participation in the college

classroom facilitates both acquisitions of knowledge

and development of problem-solving skills, the

lacking of the actual evidence can either confirm or

deny this hypothesis (Hill, 2007; Murray & Lang,

1997). Sometimes it is hard to say if the students are

truly actively engaged in the lesson or not

considering that, some encouragements cannot be

used in a certain situation as Bergquist and Phillips

(1975) state that:

‘The weakest form of encouragement is to

tell the students “I want or I expect you to

participate in the class and part of your grade

will be based on such participation.” The

problems this present are: A) What specific

on the student’s part count as participation?

Asking questions, answering questions,

giving a report, sharing information? B) How

much of the student’s grade is affected by

participation? And C) What are specific

consequences of not participating?’ (p.3)

Moreover, if the teacher treats the active students

differently, Hill (2007) claims ‘the fear of

embarrassment or of being labeled a “know-it-all” or

“teacher’s pet” may very well prevent the types of

interactions that most teachers desire’ (p.1).

In higher education, students’ engagement in

learning is becoming increasingly crucial

(Handelsman et al., 2005). Moreover, Kuh (2001)

states that universities try to use student’

engagement in learning as a significant part of

higher education assessment. In addition, Murray

and Lang (1997) highlight that higher education

emphasizes the limitations of the lecturing method

of teaching and the need for more engagement from

the students in the classroom. Because the traditional

lecturing-only is losing its charm in the classroom

and students play too passive in lectures. In contrast,

students nowadays are being prepared to face mixed

delivery methods, which exploit group discussion,

dyadic work, and peer review which all of which

reduce lecturing (Rocca, 2010). Moreover, the study

conducted by Murray and Lang in 1997 shows that

at least in certain conditions, active participation in

the college classroom does, in fact, improve student

learning of course content and development of

problem-solving skill.

Therefore, this present study purposed

investigating the sample students’ engagement in

learning and their academic achievement, finding

out the correlation between the two variables, and

finding out the contribution of students’ engagement

in learning to academic achievement.

2 METHOD

This study used percentage analysis to measure both

variables. In addition, regarding the correlation and

contribution, Pearson-product moment correlation

and Regression were used in this study by using

SPSS Ver.23.

2.1 Sample

The sample of this study was all of the students of

English Education Study Program, Faculty of

Teacher Training and Education, Sriwijaya

University who enrolled in the first semester year

2017-2018. The purposive sampling method was

used in this study, so except for the year of 2014, the

total number of sample from all years was 231

students

2.2 Instruments

The following instruments were employed for the

purpose of collecting the data from the sample.

Students’ engagement in learning questionnaire was

administered to the sample to measure their

engagement in learning. The total items of the

questionnaire were 60 items, which were divided

into 3 categories (Affective, Behavior, and

Cognitive). Moreover, the Likert scale was applied

to this questionnaire and it consisted of four options

to choose (Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Agree, and

Strongly Agree). The questionnaire was tried out to

30 non-sample students to check the validity and

reliability. The result showed that 47 items were

valid with R-value exceeded r-table 0.2542 and the

test was reliable with the reliability value of 0.89. To

study the academic achievement, the result of the

latest GPA of the sample was requested from the

administration staff of English Education Study

Program Department. The required data of the GPA

of the sample students were acquired by asking the

administrative staffs in the Faculty of English

Education Study Program. The GPA was broken

SULE-IC 2018 - 3rd Sriwijaya University International Conference on Learning and Education

down into high achiever (A), middle achiever (B),

and low achiever (C and below) where A equals to

3.67-4.00, B equals to 2.67-3.66 and C to below

equals to 0-2.66.

3 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

3.1 Findings

3.1.1 Students’ Engagement in Learning

Table 1: Students’ engagement in learning from all

years.

Year

Engagement in Learning

Affective Behavior Cognitive

All

Aspects

A P A P A P A P

2015 86 14 66 20 84 10 87 13

2016 82 18 81 15 89 10 92 8

2017 86 14 77 13 92 6 92 8

All Yea

85 15 74 16 88 9 90 10

All the data from Table 1 are in percentage and also

A stands for Active while P for Passive. From the

Table 1, taking the perspective of all years and all

aspects, it could be summarized that there were more

students that were active rather than passive students

for every aspect of students’ engagement in learning.

Overall, 90% of the students were active while only

10% of them were being passive in learning.

3.1.2 Balance Engagement

Table 2: Balance engagement of students’ engagement in

learning.

Year

Engagement in Learning

Affective Behavior Cognitive

All

Aspect

Balance Balance Balance

Balanc

2015 - 14% 6% -

2016 - 4% 1% -

2017 - 10% 2% -

All

Years

- 10% 3% -

Table 2 explained when the students got 50% in the

active category and 50% in the passive category.

Since it could not be classified as passive students or

active students, it was better to put them in balance

category where they were being neither passive nor

active. Thus, from the table above it could be figured

out that only two aspects of the engagement in

learning that had students who were balanced in the

active and passive category. In short, 10% of the

samples in the behavior aspect were classified as

balance and only 3% in cognitive.

3.1.3 Academic Achievement

Table 3: Academic achievement for all.

Year

Academic Achievement (GPA)

High

(≥ 3.67)

Middle

(≥ 2.67 - ≤ 3.66)

Low

(≤ 2.66)

2015 8% 91% 1%

2016 14% 78% 8%

2017 20% 80% 0%

All

Years

13% 84% 3%

It was quite surprising that only 13% of the students

in English Education Study Program for all years

categorized as high achiever while 84% of the

students classified as Middle Achiever. The rest of

the students for only 3% were seen as Low

Achiever.

Table 4: Academic achievement and students’ engagement

in learning.

Students’

Engagement

in learning

Academic Achievement

High

Achiever

Mid

Achiever

Low

Achiever

Active (90%) 12% 76% 2%

Passive (10%) 1% 8% 1%

Table 4 showed how many active and passive

students classified as High Achiever, Mid Achiever,

and Low Achiever in the academic achievement. It

could be seen that there were 2% of active students

who still got in the rank of Low Achiever and 1% of

passive students were categorized as High Achiever.

Overall, Mid Achiever still dominated both in active

and passive students.

3.1.4 Correlation between Students’

Engagement in Learning and

Academic Achievement

From the table 5, it could be concluded that the

results of Pearson-product moment correlation

showed that r-obtained was 0.190 and the p-value is

0.004. Because the p-value (0.004) was lower than

0.05, then H0 was rejected and H1 was accepted. It

means that there was a significant correlation

A Correlation Study between Engagement in Learning and Academic Achievement among College Student

between students’ engagement and academic

achievement.

Table 5: Correlation between the two variables.

Correlations

GPA

Questionnair

GPA Pearson

Correlation

1 .190

(

2-tailed

)

.004

N 231 231

Questionnaire Pearson

Correlation

.190

(

2-tailed

)

.004

231 231

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Table 6: Correlation among three aspects of engagement

in learning and academic achievement.

Correlations

Affective Behavio

nitive

GPA Pearson

Correlation

.214

.098 .192

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.001 .139 .003

N 231 231 231

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Table 6 showed the correlation between academic

achievement and the three aspects of engagement in

learning. The results of Pearson-product moment

correlation showed that the r-obtained for affective,

behavior and cognitive aspects were 0.214, 0.98,

0.192 and the p-value for those aspects was 0.001,

0.139, and 0.003. Because the p-value for affective

and cognitive engagement was, lower than 0.05, and

then it meant that only affective and cognitive

engagement had a significant correlation with

academic achievement while behavior engagement

did not have.

3.1.5 Contribution of Students’ Engagement

in Learning to Academic Achievement

Considering the Table 7 above as a reference, it

could be explained that the results of the regression

analysis showed that r

= 0.036 and adjusted r

0.032. It means that the contribution of the students’

engagement to academic achievement is 3.2%.

Table 7: The Contribution of engagement in learning to

academic achievement.

Model Summary

Model R R Square

Adjusted R

Square

Std. Error of

the Estimate

.190

.036 .032 .31255

a. Predictors: (Constant), Total

3.2 Discussion

3.2.1 Students’ Engagement in Learning

In the first part of the questionnaire, the results of

affective engagement showed that 85% of the

students were being active in affective aspect while

only 15% of them were passive. This was also in

line with the study conducted by Jimerson, Campos,

and Grief (2003) who found that the students have

positive feelings toward his teacher. Affective

engagement refers to the students’ feeling towards

his school, learning, teacher, and peers and also

focusing on the extent and nature of positive and

negative reactions to teachers, classmates,

academics, and school (Appleton, Christenson &

Furlong, 2008). Moreover, affective learning was

supported by students who like to work with others,

focus outward and be interdependent that eventually

helps them to stimulate emotions, motivation and

attitudes such as encouraging themselves to learn

(Apriani, Vianty, & Fiftinova, 2017).

The second part of the questionnaire discussed

the behavior engagement. In behavior aspect, the

students mostly were active as the total percentage

of the students who were active was 74% while

passive 16% and the rest in balance category.

Behavior engagement includes the students’ action

or contribution at school and is investigated through

students’ positive conduct, effort, or participation.

One kind of the questions expressed the participation

in extracurricular activities, attendance and work

habits (Fredricks, Blummenfeld & Paris, 2008).

The last part of the questionnaire was about

cognitive aspect. In this aspect, 88% of the students

were considered as active students whereas only 9%

could be classified as passive and the rest was in

balance category. As cognitive engagement includes

the students’ perception and beliefs regarding the

school and learning also focusing on the level of

investment in learning, it refers to the cognitive

processing a student brings to academic tasks as well

as the amount and type of strategies a student

utilizes (Walker, Greene, & Mansell, 2006).

SULE-IC 2018 - 3rd Sriwijaya University International Conference on Learning and Education

3.2.2 Academic Achievement

The students were divided into three categories. The

students were classified as high achiever was 13%,

middle achiever 84% and low achiever 3%.

Academic achievement is divided into three

categories, high achiever for students who got higher

than 3.67, middle achiever for them who got

between 2.67 and 3.66, and low achiever for

students who got lower than 2.66 (Park, Endo &

Goodwin, 2006). Based on Reschly & Christenson

(2006), they propose the notion of academic

engagement as a fourth indicator of students’

engagement. In addition to this Jimerson, Renshaw,

Stewart, Hart, and O’Malley (2011) contend that

academic achievement has been defined as time

spent in academic learning and can be better

explained as an outcome of the student's engagement

(e.g. Grade Point Average [GPA]). According to

that, the question occurred whether there was a

correlation between students’ engagement and their

academic achievement, which is seen as the outcome

of the engagement itself.

3.2.3 Correlation between Students’

Engagement in Learning and

Academic Achievement

It can be concluded that there was a significant

correlation for as p-value (0.004) is lower than 0.05

and the correlation found was about 0.190 and

according to Evans (1996) r-obtained that falls in

0.00 – 0.19 has a very weak correlation. This was in

line with the findings of Okafor (1993), Emah

(1998), Ogunkola (1999), and Domike (2002) cited

in Fakeye and Amao (2013) study who all found a

significant relationship between classroom

participation and students’ level of academic

achievement.

The result above was for the whole questionnaire

not for each aspect. For each aspect, the affective

and cognitive engagement were the two aspects that

had a correlation with academic achievement as both

of them has the p-value lower than 0.05.

Furthermore, affective engagement, which had r-

obtained 0.214, had a weak correlation while for

cognitive engagement, which had 0.192 r-obtained,

the correlation was a very weak correlation.

The reason why behavior did not have a

significant correlation was probably due to the

characteristics of the student itself. Bergquist and

Philips (1975) had stated six styles, which were

Avoidant, Competitive, Dependent, Collaborative,

Participant, and Independent. As it is already known

that every student has its own personality so it was

kind of hard to measure. It can also be seen from the

diverse results of the behavior engagement in

learning of the students.

3.2.4 Contribution of Students’ Engagement

in Learning to Academic Achievement

Lastly, it was found that the contribution was 3.2%

from the engagement in learning to the academic

achievement. Even though it can be categorized as a

small contribution but it is still counted as a

contribution.

Overall, the students who were disengaged and

be passive were probably caused by some factors

that were highlighted by Bergquist and Philips

(1975). The passive students in the affective

category might be caused by frustration and fear,

while apathy could be the main reason why students

become passive in the behavior aspect. Then the

problem of the passive students in the cognitive area

was perhaps the “dependence” factor. Moreover,

they also stated that classroom atmosphere could

determine whether the students can actively

contribute in the learning process. Furthermore,

based on Liu (2001), 90% of active students in

English Education Study Program, Faculty of

Teacher Training and Education, Sriwijaya

University were either in full-participation or

participation in the circumstances, while for 10% of

the passive students was either in marginal

interaction or silence observation.

4 CONCLUSIONS

From all the things that had been discussed started

from the explanation until the interpretation, a

conclusion can be made that sample of the study can

be classified as active in every aspect of engagement

in learning and there was a significant correlation

between the two variables. In other words, the

students’ engagement in learning influenced the

academic achievement of the students even though

the influence of the contribution can be said as a

small contribution.

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SULE-IC 2018 - 3rd Sriwijaya University International Conference on Learning and Education