Prediction of student performance in the engineering technologies at an open-admission community college

The purpose of this study was to analyze the influence of selected factors on the performance of those students enrolled in associate degree programs in engineering technology at Delaware Technical & Community College. Using a causal-comparative design, academic factors considered in this study included: whether or not developmental coursework was required, the student's first-quarter grade point average (GPA), first-quarter credits taken, test scores on the Comparative Guidance and Placement (CGP) test in reading, writing, arithmetic computation and elementary algebra, and whether the student graduated or not from college. Non-academic factors considered were the student's age at admission, gender, ethnicity, and marital status.;The study showed that there was a significant relationship of selected factors to membership in one of four classification groups: pre-technology/did not graduate, pre-technology/graduated, full-technology/did not graduate, and full-technology/graduated. Using multiple discriminant function analysis, 72.4 percent of the 815 students tested were correctly classified as to group membership using first quarter GPA, CGP placement test scores in writing, arithmetic computation and elementary algebra, the first-quarter GPA, and first-quarter credits taken as predictors. The student's first-quarter GPA had the greatest influence in the first discriminant function, which was able to explain over 82 percent of the variance of the four member groups.;Using a log-linear (logit) model, the study was able to calculate the odds (or percent probability) of students graduating from an engineering technology degree program using the student's first-quarter GPA, ethnicity, marital status, and whether or not the student required developmental courses at admission as predictors. Odds of graduation ranged from 0.176 to 1 (85 percent chance of graduation) to odds of 75 to 1 (approximately 1.3 percent chance). For the 16 possible scenarios, the top eight odds were found to be those who had first-quarter GPAs of at least 2.0, irrespective of the other three factors considered. For both research questions, the major factor for graduation was found to be whether or not students achieved a first-quarter GPA of at least 2.0.