Methodology and methods
Context of the study
The University of the West Indies is an autonomous regional university serving
17 English-speaking Caribbean countries and territories. The university has three
physical campuses located in Jamaica (Mona campus), Barbados (Cave Hill campus)
and Trinidad and Tobago, (St. Augustine campus) and one virtual campus, the
Open Campus. This study was carried out in the Faculty of Science and Agriculture
at the St. Augustine campus. The faculty has several departments, including the An analysis of some factors affecting student academic performance in 85
an introductory biochemistry course at the University of the West Indies
Department of Food Production which offers AGRI 1013 to first year students
majoring in general agriculture, environmental science, geography, chemistry and
human nutrition. Admission criteria into these majors varies widely, ranging from
diplomas in relevant disciplines, Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination
(CAPE), General Certificate in Education (GCE) Advanced level, Caribbean
Examinations Council (CXC), and associate degrees in relevant disciplines. The
AGRI 1013 course is a prerequisite to a number of second and third year courses,
meaning that a student who fails AGRI 1013 will find their choice of courses limited
in subsequent years and may be unable to graduate on time.
Population and sample
The target population for this study was all students taking the introductory
biochemistry (AGRI 1013) course in the Faculty of Science and Agriculture, at
the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. According to the University’s
records of registered students, there were 165 registered students for the 2010/2011
academic year. The list of these students was downloaded from Banner® (a student
administration software) into an Excel file and used as a sampling frame from
which a random sample was drawn with a sampling fraction of 40%. Random
numbers between 0 and 1 were generated in the Excel file against the list of students
using the = RAND () function in Microsoft Excel 2010.