Effects of Students’ Course Materials Page Views on Academic Performance in Online Courses

Students’ reading of the course materials had never been measured because no data was available. It was assumed that students who performed better in their learning would have read their course materials more compared to those who performed poorly. The Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) provided course materials in electronic forms in textbooks and study guides. The purpose of this study, based on data from the Academic Year 2020, was to find out was there a correlation between students’ reading of the course materials and their performance in 10 online courses. A quantitative approach was used in the study. It was found that a very weak positive relationship, r (0.151), existed for students who read the e-textbooks while there was almost no relationship, r (0.084), for students who read the study guides when correlated with their performance. Furthermore, a statistical significance existed in the medians of e-textbook and study guide usages between those students who passed the online courses compared to those who failed. This significance could also be found in students’ grade-bands. This study will be of interest to institutions with data available on students’ readership behaviour. It is relevant to the sub-theme of “inspiring innovations” as it involves data analytics for online learning.