It happens to almost every student at some point or another during college. Your alarm wakes you up in time for you to go your morning class, and, for whatever reason, you find you just don't have the will to physically get up. You close your eyes, and for a moment, wish you could spend the day like Peter Gibbons in Office Space, just lazily sleeping without a care in the world. Then it dawns on you that there's a chance you can sleep in, if you can remember the attendance policy for your class. You can't remember off the top of your head, so you excitedly begin tearing through the syllabus to the class, assuming you still have it, until you find that all-important policy.
Attendance policies are strange things, and perhaps the strangest thing about them is how often they completely differ from one another. There is no university-wide attendance policy that students must follow, but many departments create their own. Some departments have strict attendance policies, but many times the policy is whatever the professor feels like. It's not that some professors just don't enforce these policies; many make up their own and put it in their syllabus.
The lack of uniformity can be mind-boggling for students. It's not uncommon for a gen-ed to have a strict attendance policy while an important course for the student's major has a very lenient one. It's obviously more important that the student attend the major course, but he or she only faces consequences if the gen-ed is missed. Now, we should clarify something here. Every student should attend all classes. Not only are professors there to teach you in the first place, you paid to learn. Not going to class is essentially throwing money away while pretending to be a student. Years from now most students will be paying off their college debts, and nobody wants to pay for a geology class they don't even remember because they never went after the first day .
Full article.
Or they could just go to the class they signed up for when they are supposed to be there....instead of trying to remember all those gosh-darned policies. "The lack of uniformity can be mind-boggling for students," should be changed to "Most everything and stuff can be mind-boggling for students."
ReplyDeleteAlso, "Years from now most students will be paying off their college debts, and nobody wants to pay for a geology class they don't even remember because they never went after the first day," implies that people want to pay off debts for classes they do remember?! I don't want to pay any of my debt!
Poor dears. If trying to satisfy different expectations from different people makes their widdle bitty heads hurt, they are in for a world of hurt after they flunk out. Life will be very painful for them.
ReplyDeleteCan you IMAGINE this shithead in a position of real responsibility, involving large amounts of money or property or human safety or life? I can just hear the whining about "the lack of uniformity can be mind-boggling" now.
DeleteThis makes my head hurt.
ReplyDeleteFunny: I was sure this was part of one of those badges-not-credits-cause-learning-isnt-measured-in-hours screeds that IHE's been peddling hard these days; imagine my surprise when I click through and find that it's actually a student publication calling for more fascist enforcement of seat-time policies!
ReplyDeleteThe value of attendance in my courses has been going up the last few years, as I'm increasingly frustrated with grading crap by people who don't actually show up except for tests and papers, don't think rules apply to them, and don't show any evidence of learning.
I'm tired of giving them D's that count for credit, as though they'd actually accomplished something. I want their grade to reflect the depth of their worthlessness.
I don't take attendance. I do something in class every day, to hand in, for points. You aren't there or you are there and don't do the thing because you didn't do the reading, you lose the points. The things get filed, and I can see your attendance. I am not interested in giving those with thin files any benefit of any doubt, ever. Is that consistent enough?
ReplyDeleteHow do you prevent students from walking in, delivering their scribblings, and walking out? It's epidemic in my classes of 80 and 100, and I'm not allowed to carry a firearm, so I can't shoot them.
DeleteDo the scribblings in the middle (or at the end) of class.
DeleteI do the same thing as Frog and Toad and spread the activities out throughout the class. It has the added side benefit that students seem to do better on the harder assignments after completing the activities.
DeleteI feel like I am a hypocrite when I apply school-mandated attendance rules. My best time in college was spent having deep conversations while playing cards in bars. In my senior year I didn't attend at all, I just camped in the library around mid-April with a friend's notes and passed all the classes. Yet, I have to take point's from my student's grade if they don't show up. (Grad school, here in the States, was a different game of course).
ReplyDeleteI take attendance daily. Up at the top, I scribble myself a short note of what we covered that day, just as an FYI for myself. When I'm grading papers loaded with mistakes that were covered in class, I look at the attendance sheet. When I see that the student wasn't there, I stop putting any effort into grading the paper. I stop circling errors, I stop making marginal comments, and I sure as hell don't write end comments, other than "The errors in this paper were covered in the class you skipped." After 16+ years of teaching, I am finally learning to stop putting more effort into their work than they do.
ReplyDeleteI have one flake who has missed 4 out of the first 6 classes of the semester; he hasn't done any of the online homework, and he missed peer review. We've been asked by Student Services to fill out "Early Alert" forms to help get the little darlings back on track. We're supposed to email the student, or have a F2F conference. I didn't do either of those things, but I did fill out the part of the form for Advice to the Student, paraphrased here: "Drop the class. A 25-point hole in my gradebook at the start of the semester, coupled with lack of attendance, means that you, Flakey McFlakerton, will have to attend EVERY FUCKING CLASS from here on out and turn in minimum B work just to attain a C (passing/credit). Fuck you for the fact that I wasted my valuable time filling this fucking form out."
Why can't they just fucking come to class and do the fucking reading and turn the fucking work in on time??? Whyyyyyyyy????????
I hope this author doesn't travel much. I am sure the different speed limits and other traffic laws would be confusing. In some states you can drive 75 in others you are held to a paltry 65 on the interstates.
ReplyDeleteObviously this person only wants to know what's in it for him. If I come to class, can I have a sucker?
I should ask my dean if we can get paid a bonus for every faculty and committee meeting we attend.