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As an adult, I expect my professors to acknowledge my independence, not babysit me by making sure I attend class. I find these rules paternalistic, vague and difficult to enforce. Universities should separate attendance from academics and focus on engaging students instead of threatening them with a bad grade.
Penalizing students for being absent is unfair because it ignores our individual responsibilities as adults. Students should learn to make decisions without relying on others to reward or punish them.
Being independent is part of the college experience. Most of us are living separately from our parents and getting jobs for the first time. Enforcing attendance policies denies us our adulthood and perpetuates a lack of trust in students.
Taking attendance is a poor measurement of a student’s academic proficiency. There are many reasons for absence that are unrelated to class performance, such as sickness or emergencies that a student can prioritize over class.
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If you shot the one who came in late by 20 minutes, maybe the rest would show up sooner.
ReplyDelete...and at the end of class, shoot the first one who stops applauding!
DeleteNo, Siberia for him/her.
Deletedoing the same thing to the recipient of the lowest test score also tightens up the grading curve..
Delete"A study of the relationship between attendance and grades in the college classroom by Paul Le Blanc of the University of Texas at San Antonio stated that there are no significant relationships between grades and attendance."
ReplyDeleteThe study is here: http://communication.utsa.edu/leblanc/articles/art31.pdf
In the abstract, the author writes, "Results indicated that attendance significantly influences test score averages for students across sections and institutions." In the literature review he cites a number of previous studies that reach the same conclusion.
Thompson Harun has made his English 100 instructor (the one who would have taught him how to back up claims with evidence, had he been in class) very, very sad today.
Embarrassing bullshit, inelegance, and circular arguments from both LeBlanc and Harun.
Delete"we shouldn't be held responsible for showing up on time, because showing up on time is our adult responsibility..." Ow, the poor logic makes my head hurt.
DeleteWelcome to adulthood, Thompson: whatever you do, attendance is taken.
If the ones who didn't turn up would take actual responsibility and not bitch because they didn't know the material or didn't know the instructions, and didn't write stupid shit on my evals like "prof is mean because once she has given information 2 or 3 times she won't give it again", I would not give 2 fucks about whether any of them ever showed up.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, if they acted like adults, then I would treat them like adults.
I am willing to forgo my attendance policy----but I won't forgo my late policy. I HATE when they sashay in late. I am thinking aloud here (LOL).....maybe I'll have that policy next semester. Something like, no late attendance. Or....only allowed to be late three times, then, you won't be allowed in. Whadaya guys think?
ReplyDeleteHow about "Absences will not be counted against you, but walking in late will result in a 1% drop in your course grade for each occurrence"?
DeleteOne year, in one course, I locked the door after I came into the room. Anybody coming later than me was out of luck. It worked with that group.
DeleteIn one of the last courses I taught, I had someone who made a habit of coming in well after I started my lecture. Nothing I tried would convince him to get his backside into gear and show up on time. I wasn't strict in enforcing that, though, because it wouldn't have done any good. The students would simply complain to their department head who, being the spineless marshmallow that he was, caved into every one of their demands.
Actually I tell my students I'd rather they be late than not show up at all. But we have a lot of commuters and traffic here can be hell. If they're late more than a couple time though, then I start marking off. But a handful of times I can live with if they come in quietly.
ReplyDeleteI take attendance in part because it helps me learn my students' names...
We can't engage students who are not attending.
ReplyDelete"I find these rules paternalistic, vague and difficult to enforce." That sums up most of life's rules. Get used to it.
We should focus more on engaging students? As if reallocating the half minute I spend printing my attendance sheet towards being more exciting would actually make a difference. I'm a pretty good speaker but I can't compete with what's on Facebook and Youtube, much less whatever or whoever you did last night that made you oversleep my class.
That's the point where he lost me, too. Learning to listen through, and get something from, boring lectures is a useful life skill. It's nice if professors make the lectures interesting, do things to promote engagement, etc., but students have been learning for 1000s of years from droning lecturers.
DeleteDear Snowflake,
Delete90% of Life is showing up.
Love,
Woody Allen
"I find these rules paternalistic, vague and difficult to enforce." That sums up most of life's rules. Get used to it
DeleteThis.
What do these people think goes on in the workplace? Most jobs give you 40 hours of sick leave for the entire year (80 if you're extremely lucky), and though they typically don't care if you're faking sick or genuinely have the bird flu, once those 40 hours are used up, you go without getting paid, and/or you get fired.
I can't imagine saying to a boss, "But I don't actually have to be here to do my work ..." "I can work just as easily from home ..." Welcome to the adult world, and good luck with that.
@GG -
DeleteI can't imagine saying to a boss, "But I don't actually have to be here to do my work ..." "I can work just as easily from home ..." Welcome to the adult world, and good luck with that.
Well, today's employers - including universities - are increasingly saying, "Okay, your formerly skilled job is now piece work. You can deliver it from home, saving us money for office resources and saving us the misery of giving a shit about you. We don't care if you're sick or not. Just deliver or we won't call back. And if you're at home, we'll eventually set things up so that you don't even know who your colleagues are. Try organizing, schmuck!"
That's true--perhaps these students who complain would enjoy the awesome "independence" of independent contracting. Twice the FICA, none of the job security.
DeleteThe person that wrote this article is either (i) bitter they lost attendance marks, or (ii) actually mature enough to act responsibly but is too dense to realize that not every student is like him/her. In either case, this article is a joke.
ReplyDeleteAnd nothing takes credibility away faster than saying "a study showed this" without providing the details and limitations of the study. Better yet, do a full literature review of all such studies for and against your point. Mentioning one study doesn't prove your point.
I looked up that study because I thought, "huh, grades not related to attendance? That's counterintuitive." I found it here: http://communication.utsa.edu/leblanc/articles/art31.pdf
DeleteThe author actually finds that attendance *is* significantly correlated to test scores, and that the scores in classes where attendance is required are higher overall than in classes where attendance is not required. He also leads with a review of other studies showing pretty much the same thing.
I guess the kid found the article on the first page of his Google search and didn't bother to read it. Kind of like the way some of my students put their bibliographies together.
I take roll because it's university policy to do so and I don't have tenure.
ReplyDeleteJesus H. Tapdancing Christ. What a moron.
ReplyDeleteAt the end of every semester, I enter grades. Grades range from A-D, then F0 to F-16. If a student gets an F, the F reflects date of last attendance, so F9 means that the last time I saw the student was just after midterms. The only way I know which F grade to enter is through my attendance sheets.
Attendance isn't figured into the grade except as a way to lower it. My attendance policy allows 3 absences for whatever reason--then after that the syllabus stipulates that their final grade may be lower upon subsequent absences. It usually is, but not because I go in and manually lower the grade. When they miss, they do things wrong because they didn't catch up on the material, ergo their assignments get lower grades due to mistakes they might not have made had they attended class in the first damn place. Then again, since so many do attend but don't pay attention, maybe it really doesn't matter.
My head hurts.
I am forced to take attendance. Plus, it is one of the only ways I remove "problems" from my class.
ReplyDeleteAt the place I taught at, the official policy was to take attendance but that was rarely enforced, if ever. With each new group of student, I would just so that I could connect a name with a face but, once I got to them, I simply didn't bother.
DeleteI figured if they were old enough to attend that institution, they were old enough to be considered adults and accept responsibility for their actions.
I don't take attendance and don't care to, thinking that it is indeed the student's responsibility as a young adult. My job is to demonstrate to them that failure to meet their responsibilities has negative consequences. In-class graded work, quizzes, etc. that cannot be made up generally suffice for this. I don't have to get mad, or give them a parental lecture, or get enmeshed with their personal issues. I just give them a zero and that's that. It's in the syllabus, and I stick to it come hell or high water. They don't have to like it, but they understand it, and they know they have no grounds to complain.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, I agree with Mr. Harun. I'd be happy to forgo taking attendance/giving participation grades (except for the bureaucratic reasons BurntChrome mentions above; federal financial aid law pretty much requires that we take attendance of some sort, for the purpose of being able to report when a student disappeared). But there's a corollary: the work in the class -- you know, the actual work, which students have to master no matter how they get the grounding to do so -- would end up being worth more. And I'd need to be able to flunk students if they don't do well, with no repercussions (which, actually, I can do -- it's a bit easier in writing classes, where papers either do or don't exist, and people usually flunk because they don't -- but I realize many others can't).
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
ReplyDeleteLook here you selfish, self-centered, grade-grubbing schmuck. If attending classes were only about you acquiring knowledge to be spit back out on a test then they whole higher ed system would have goe to online by now.
Going to class is an experience. It's about you engaging in the learning process, you participating in class discussions that are for the benefit of everyone you schmuck, not just you. And strangely enough, sometimes students learn things that won't end up on a test! Sometimes we are learning how to engage in higher order thinking or learning how to problem solve.
You reading the book is *not* going to replace that experience.
So yeah. Your grade should be lower because it is not, I repeat, not just about how many multiple choice items you get right on a test.
I'm putting this on my syllabus.
DeleteATTENDANCE POLICY:
Look here you selfish, self-centered, grade-grubbing schmuck...
This article makes me want to go hit things, give something a nice resounding smack.
ReplyDeleteHahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
ReplyDeletepantpantpant
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaahahhahahahaha
OMG, my ribs hurt..
Long ago in another century, I worked in an electronics refurbishing factory for a couple of years. If you punched in 1 minute late, it was an "incident." Get 3 of those you were let go.
DeleteHad great insurance and a 401K, though.
I understand my esteemed colleagues lack of interest in being attendance monitors.
ReplyDeleteBut for Mr. Harun's screed about his adult choices ... STFU.
At my post-doctoral residency in Care and Feeding of Wombats ... which occurred well into my adulthood ... doctoral workers were granted the "respect" of only having to sign in on a time sheet.
Everyone else punched a time clock.
We were all working adult professionals not whiny, "I already know all I need to know" flaky flakes.
Seriously, I'm starting to wish I just had more whiny tantrums since becoming an adult. Jeebus knows behaving in a mature and responsible manner hasn't paid many dividends!
Some of my professors would require a daily quiz or a brief reflection in order to take attendance. It not only helped him/her know who was there, but reinforced what the students learned and helped the prof see if he/she was getting through to them. You guys could be even crueler by having a quiz at the beginning and maybe a reflection at the end of class to punish the late, the absent, and those who leave early! :)
ReplyDeleteI don't take attendance. It's the last remaining vestige of my "treat them like adults" approach, and frankly, if I were to teach again, it might go the way of all the others. I've learned that *every single thing* that does not have course credit or extra credit attached to it will either be ignored or approached half-heartedly by the majority of the class, regardless of how blatantly obviously useful it would be. Personally, this stupidity stresses me out which might be reason enough to make things mandatory, but on top of that, the students who don't do what I forcefully and repeatedly recommend because I didn't attach credit to it then turn around and complain that a) they failed and b) I was like a broken record reminding them to do this stuff (which they didn't do).
ReplyDeleteCan Harun explain to me why I count the cost of their lack of responsibility in my evaluations?
The problem has just gotten so much worse. They may be legally adults but they are NOT adults. If you don't enforce their attendance in some way, they just won't do it. And they think they are fine because it doesn't detract from their grade, but then when they do shit on the exams they think you're just grading too hard.
DeleteYears of coddling makes them require more coddling. Enforce their attendance, at least for the Freshman and Sophomore years. By Junior and Senior, maybe the smaller class size can suffice.
edit: why I *should* count the cost...
ReplyDeleteNow you know why, whenever I hear an undergraduate demand to be treated as an adult, I just laugh.
ReplyDeleteA normal laugh, or the creepy "Stalin in 1945" laugh?
Delete