Factors Influencing the Final Exam Scores of Students in the Pilot Course of Ecological Civilization Education at Kaili University, China

Abstract

To enhance people's awareness of ecological civilization and to popularize the concept, the Ecological Civilization Education course was piloted with students of different levels in Guizhou Province, China, in 2020. As the only university representative of the pilot institute, Kaili University has been offering the Ecological Civilization Education course to all first-year students every autumn semester since 2020. However, we do not know which factors have impacts on teaching effectiveness in this course and to what extent they influence teaching effectiveness. We randomly selected 60 classes at Kaili University from 2020 to 2023 and collected data from all the students of these classes for this study, and we analyzed 10 factors that may affect the final exam score in the course. The generalized linear model showed that there were differences in scores between genders, among students' majors, and between years of enrollment. Class size, the mean score on homework, and the attention rate had significant positive impacts on the final exam score. Students' participation and completed assignments did not have significant impacts. However, the percentage of completed assignments had a significant negative impact. The results indicate that assigning too much homework was detrimental to final exam score. Although our findings are based on a local sample, they have guiding significance for the future implementation of this course throughout China.