Effectiveness of student-oriented counselling on behavior, attitude and academic performance of first year professional undergraduate students

Introduction and Aim: Student oriented counselling is given for the purpose of improving well-being, alleviating distress and enhancing coping skills. It focuses to facilitate student achievement, improve behaviour, attitude, attendance, academic performance and to take decisions for their future. The present study is done to assess and compare classroom behavior, attitude towards college and academics and academic performance of first year professional undergraduate students before and after counselling intervention. Materials and Methods: An experimental pre-test, post-test, control group design was framed for present study. As per simple random sampling 150 students were taken for study group with counselling intervention and 150 students for control group without counselling intervention to investigate the effect of Student Counselling on student class room behaviour, attitude towards college & academics and academic performance of first year professional under graduate students. A structured questionnaire was administered for both the groups after one month of college entry, internal marks were collected and one to one personal counselling was given to study group for eight months whereas the control group was withheld. After eight months, post-test was given for both the groups and internal marks were collected. Results: The collected data was analysed using SPSS software version ±23.0. The independent ‘t’ test results revealed that, in study group there was statistically significant difference after counselling i.e., post-test, in mean score of class room behaviour (t = 4.684 at p = 0.0001), attitude towards college and academics (t = 7.266 at p = 0.0001), student problems affecting academics (t = 10.097 at p = 0.0001) and academic performance (t = 11.013 at p = 0.0001) among students comparable to pre-test as compared to control group. Conclusion: The student oriented counselling showed improved positive classroom behaviour, attitude towards college and academics and improved academic performance in scoring good marks in examinations. Keywords: Student counselling; behavior; attitude; academic performance; professional undergraduate students.