An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Course Meeting Frequency, Attendance and Performance
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Abstract
Using data from Economics and History courses, taught across multiple semesters, we show that a triweekly meeting frequency improves student performance relative to a biweekly meeting frequency. We provide evidence that this effect operates through two channels. First, there is an indirect effect that operates through attendance. While greater attendance improves course score, this effect is less in a triweekly course. Second, there is a direct positive effect to more frequent course meetings on student performance. These two effects combine to increase student performance by 3 to 9 percentage points when meeting triweekly instead of biweekly. While students perform better overall on a triweekly meeting schedule, there are more absences and less consistent attendance.
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