Abstract:

Academic degrees in the university system have changed over time, and not long ago we moved from 5 or 6 year bachelor degrees to 3 or 4 year bachelor degrees, as part of the homogenisation of higher education at European level (from Bologna onwards). This new perspective implies the creation of new teaching and learning contexts, which we call the "degree effect", as there may not be a single academic context. For example, in the case of academic performance, the results obtained by students may be influenced by the degree in which they are enrolled.

Hence the importance of studying the differential effects of grades on students' academic performance. While this bias may be caused by preferences, it is highly likely that an important part of academic performance is conditioned by differences in characteristics between different grades. For example, the number of STEM subjects in the curriculum, class or tutorial schedules, assessment periods, compulsory work placements or the difficulty of combining studies with paid work, family responsibilities or access to scholarships or grants, etc.

Although there are very few studies on this subject at university level, advances in the application of multilevel models to the field of higher education offer a structure of analysis by level (2 or 3) that allows progress in the study of the differential effects that may exist between different academic contexts (degrees). Therefore, our methodology requires a multi-level modelling strategy to study the "grade effect" on the academic performance of social science students (CCSS) at the Complutense University of Madrid. That is, the proportion of the variance in the average academic performance of the grades that can be explained specifically by the characteristics of the grade. To do this, we rely on the academic footprint of students in the different grades that are part of the CCSS domain.

The preliminary results obtained highlight the importance of the nature and characteristics of grades on students' academic outcomes, i.e. there is an important relationship between the dynamics of grade functioning and students' learning outcomes.

Keywords:

Grade, academic footprint, academic performance, differential effect, multilevel.