The Effect of Class Attendance and Lecture Notes on Learning Outcomes

At many large universities it is conventional to deliver undergraduate introductory economics courses in a large lecture hall. However, not surprisingly, casual empiricism suggests that rates of student absenteeism are significantly greater in a large lecture format than in a smaller classroom setting. A compounding factor is that numerous empirical studies have established a significant negative relation between absenteeism and student performance. This study investigates the relation between absenteeism, the use of instructor provided online lecture notes, and student performance. The findings are that on average instructor lecture notes are not a substitute for class attendance. However, for some learning styles they can be a substitute, but for most learning styles they are not