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AbstractStress is concomitant with students’ life and can have a significant impact on their lives, and even how they go about their academic work. Globally, in every five visits by patients to the doctor, three are stress-related problems. This study examined stress and its impact on the academic and social life among students of a university in Ghana. The descriptive cross-sectional survey design was employed. Using the stratified and simple random (random numbers) sampling methods, 500 regular undergraduate students were engaged in the study. A questionnaire made up of Perceived Stress Scale and Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale was used to gather data for the study. Frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviation, and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), with AMOS were used for the analyses. It was found that majority of the students were moderately stressed. Paramount among the stressors were academic stressors, followed by institutional stressors, and external stressors. Stress had a significant positive impact on the academic and social life of students. It was concluded that undergraduate students, in one way or the other, go through some kind of stress during the course of their study. It was recommended that the university, through its Students’ Affairs, and Counselling Sections, continue to empower students on how to manage and deal with stress in order to enhance their academic life.

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The tutor’s role in enhancing student retention in distance learning is paramount. This study aims to predict retention and not actual retention by investigating how tutoring support predicts student retention in distance learning at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana. Moore Transactional Distance Theory underpinned the theoretical framework of this study. The correlational research design was adopted for the study. The multistage sampling technique was used to sample 727 student participants from a sampling frame of 8731 out of which 625 was used for the analysis. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data. Data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings of the study revealed that the respondents had a positive perception towards tutoring support offered at the University. However, at an alpha level of .05 tutoring support made a non-significant contribution to prediction (p = .11). The findings further, revealed that a unit increase in tutoring support will improve student retention by 1.42 times. Implications of the study were also discussed.

The aims of the study was to investigate the influence of personality-traits and learning styles on academic performance of University of Cape Coast (UCC) distance learners, taking into consideration the moderating effects of academic self-discipline and academic self-confidence. The correlational research design was adopted. The sample was 805, made up of 10 centre coordinators, 763 level 200 Diploma in Basic Education (DBE) students and 32 course tutors. The stratified sampling procedure that makes use of the random number method of simple random sampling technique was used to select all the respondents. Questionnaire and interview-guide were the instruments used. The quantitative data was analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics, while the qualitative data were analysed manually using the thematic approach. The study revealed that openness to experience traits that students demonstrate contributes more to their likelihood of obtaining high level academic performance. Also, students prefer using read/write and visual learning styles. Furthermore, students' personality-traits and learning styles have significant influence on students' academic performance. However, this influence becomes stronger indirectly through the moderating effect of students' academic self-discipline and self-confidence.