Software applications course as an early indicator of academic performance

Abstract

This study’s objective is to determine if students who were unable to successfully complete a required sophomore level business software applications course encountered unique academic difficulties in that course, or if their difficulty signaled more general academic achievement problems in business. The study points to the importance of including a software applications course early in business schools’ curriculum and examines factors associated with a applications course early in business schools’ curriculum and examines factors associated with a success in the course, as well as in students’ early college GPA. An examination of the characteristics of the students who do not successfully complete the business software applications course, and a comparison to the local predictive Major Field Test in Business (MFT-B) scoring model, suggests that over 84% of the unsuccessful students would be likely to receive an MFT-B score below the 50th percentile of an institutional normative distribution and 45% would be expected to score in the bottom 20% of that same distribution. Students who failed the course were predicted to score 23% lower on the MFT than comparable students.