Students' perceptions of the influence of extracurricular activities on academic performance : a case study of the Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa

Abstract

Extracurricular activities (ECAs) form part of student affairs in higher learning institutions. ECAs are recognised as part of the university curriculum offering learning experiences outside the classroom. As ECAs complement the formal curriculum, universities allocate a budget for running the ECAs and afford students opportunities to participate in the ECAs of their choice. Therefore, participation in ECAs is not mandatory, but voluntary, in that some students participate and some do not. This study aims to investigate how the students' involvement in ECAs influences their academic achievements and specifically, self-directed learning (SDL). The rationale was based on the gap in research literature regarding the potential role of ECAs on students' SDL. The Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) offers various ECAs to its student population. The TUT students were therefore selected so that their views of the effects of ECA participation on their academic achievement and SDL could be explored and explained. The thoughts of students who participated in ECAs at TUT, and students who did not participate, were juxtaposed as two activity systems in the third-generation Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) tradition to see if there were differences in their perceptions on their academic achievement and SDL. CHAT is a heuristic that highlights affordances and tensions in terms of the role of ECAs in enhancing academic performance and SDL. For this reason, the CHAT was used. The methodological procedures were illustrated and discussed using a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design. The first phase of the study was conducted using a questionnaire to determine the relationship between ECAs at TUT and academic achievement and understand students' thoughts about the influence of ECAs on SDL. The second phase involved interviews and used thematic analyses to get an in-depth understanding of TUT students' thoughts on the interplay between ECAs and their academic achievement and SDL. The quantitative results showed that the mean scores of the four domains of SDL of the group that participated in ECAs at TUT (the experimental group) were slightly higher than the mean scores of the group that

did not (the control group). The mean score of the experimental group was 4.13 (SD=1.052) on the learning motivation domain of the SDL heuristic while the control group had the mean score of 3.94 (SD=1.040). The mean score of the experimental group was 3.94 (SD=1.01) on the planning and motivation domain of the SDL heuristic while the control group had the mean score of 3.59 (SD=0.94). The mean score of the experimental group was 3.93 (SD=1.05) on the self-monitoring domain while the control group had a mean score of 3.57 (SD=0.99). The mean score of the experimental group was 3.96 (SD=1.07) on the interpersonal communication domain of the SDL heuristic, while the control group had the mean of 3.69 (SD=0.97). This study thus found that students who participated in ECAs indicated higher SDL scores. Although the mean scores of the experimental group were slightly higher than that of the control group, the views of both groups on SDL abilities were all positive. The qualitative results confirmed the results of the quantitative results. This study extends the knowledge of investigating the relationship between SDL using CHAT as a research lens and serves as a useful report on how ECAs might be used as a tool to enhance student learning.