COMPARISON OF THE PERFORMANCE OF UNDERGRADUATE PART-TIME AND FULL-TIME INTEGRATED SCIENCE STUDENTS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF JOS.

Abstract

The aim of this research study was to compare the academic performance of part-time and full-time integrated science students of the University of Jos. What prompted the study was the general concern of education and the public regarding the comparability of the product that emerged from the part-time and full-time degree programme run by Nigerian Universities. The study was guided by three research questions and four formulated null hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance. The population of the study comprised of Integrated Science students of part-time and full-time programme of the university of Jos. Purposive sampling technique was used to draw a sample of 16 and 25 undergraduate performance scores respectively, from results of part-time and full-time integrated science students who offered the courses in ITS 332, Geo 321, Bio 407, Phy 431, and ITS 411. The instrument used for data collection was a checklist tagged “Checklist for Obtaining Undergraduate Performance Score (COUPS). The data collected were analyzed using mean, standard deviation and t-test for independent sample. The findings showed that, for each of the five courses, there were no significant differences between the performance of part-time and full-time integrated science graduates except in ITS 332 and ITS 411 which indicated a little significant difference in favour of full-time students. For each of the five courses, there was no significant difference between the academic performance of male part-time and full-time integrated science students except in ITS 332, Geo 321, Bio 407 and ITS 411 which revealed a significant difference between the two groups in favour of the male full-time graduates. Similarly, for each of the five courses there was no significant difference between the academic performance of female part-time and full-time students except in ITS 332 and PHY 431 which indicated evidence of significant difference in favour of female full- time graduates. It was then recommended, among others that there is need for lecturers to have enough time with the part-time Integrated Science students to encourage them to improve on their academic performance. Also full-time students should be encouraged to use their time effectively as the results indicated that the difference between them and the part-time students is not much.