The association between course selection and academic performance: exploring psychological interpretations

ABSTRACT

Course selection is an important issue for university students. This study investigates the relationship between course selection and overall academic performance among university students. Using anonymous transcripts from 1681 undergraduates across ten majors, we examined the association between elective course load or choices and academic performance while controlling for the influence of grade leniency. Results showed that students with higher academic performance tended to schedule more courses at the early stage of university, even when the average workload was already high. Additionally, students with different levels of academic performance showed differences in their elective course choices, with course choices positively associated with academic performance being rated as having a higher potential to satisfy extrinsic motivation but a lower potential to satisfy intrinsic motivation. We discussed the possibility of interpreting the association between course selection and academic performance from a psychological perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• Course selection
• course load
• academic performance
• academic pathways
• higher education

Acknowledgement

We thank Changjin Li for helpful discussion about this project and two anonymous reviewers for many valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For all correlation tests, we z-scaled GPA and predictors within each cohort under each major before the tests and reported correlation coefficients r. All linear mixed-effects analyses were conducted using R package lmerTest (Kuznetsova, Brockhoff, and Christensen 2017). For all linear mixed effect models, we used the formula “GPA∼X + (1| Major) + (1| Cohort) + (1|Gender)” where X represents a predictor (e.g., elective course credits in the first semester). We reported the standardized regression coefficient β, the 95% confidence interval of β, and the significant value p.