We have had several discussions, here and elsewhere, on the value of requiring attendance vs. letting our students hang themselves. I think that attendance in my classes has been particularly low in past years because I make my overheads available online.
I had a frank discussion with my class about this today. I explained to (almost all 120 of) them that I had no desire to make attendance required, but that I recognized that my overheads are at times dense with material, and I would like to ease those note-taking stresses. The problems, as I saw them, were that (1) constructing note outlines would take as much time as making the overheads themselves, and I have trouble enough just keeping up with lecture prep (not a good excuse, but they seemed sympathetic), and (2) making the overheads universally available doesn't reward the students who come to class enough, in my opinion.
My students thought that making the overheads available but password protected, with the password changing with each lecture and only given out in lecture would perhaps be a reasonable solution. I think it's still too easy for no-shows to get the overheads from friends, and emailing the general announcement that the overheads were ready for those who had been to class seemed really petty and lame. But I'm going to give it a try.
Of course, not 20 minutes after I posted the overheads, someone wrote me to complain that the format was inconvenient. Sheesh.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
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We don't have the attendance debate at my campus because campus policy mandates that we take attendance every day, so I just post all my slides online every week after I give my lecture (but not before, for these reasons). That said, I'm not sure the password idea would be too beneficial, since students could easily spread the passwords online to students who weren't there.
What about giving rewards for coming to class (e.g., perfect attendance extra credit, easily obtainable participation points)? It's one of the ways I boost my attendance ...
Another thought would be to pull content off some of your powerpoints and write it on an overhead or the board.
I just can't take attendence. There are 120 people in this class and I have no TA. I agree with you that the password idea will be easily corrupted. I wonder, though, if the small psychological barrier between the student who skips and the notes will be sufficient to persuade those students who "sit on the fence" about coming to class. I'm not really concerned about the students who never show up regardless; having my notes or not is not going to make much difference there.
Writing some on the board is a good idea, but the board is completely obscured by the huge projection screen.
My lecture hall seats ~200, so most of the front wall is filled up by the digital projector's output. There's also an overhead projector in the room, so what I'll do is leave a portion (the lower 3/4 or so) of my PowerPoint slides blank (I just have a title on the slide), and then turn on the overhead projector and write, using the overhead, in the blank space on the front wall. It works surprisingly well.
I also know of instructors who use in-class response systems to help encourage/reward attendance, so that's another thought.
I don't take attendance in my classes. I also don't accept late homework under any circumstances. Homework is assigned daily, with few exceptions, such as the day of an exam. Therefore, if a student turns in homework, you are "there." If not, she is "absent."
I could understand how you wouldn't necessarily want to do this with 120 students. I have 80 and can only manage it by spot checking homework (I grade 3-4 problems per assignment.)
I had a lot of time during yesterday's lecture to puzzle some of this out. Radagast, your solution of writing on the board won't work, for one simple reason: although the screen covers the entire blackboard and could be lifted, the beamer is aimed at the upper half of the huge screen, and I can barely touch, with a pointer, the lower edge of the image. I would need one of those interactive presentation packages where you can scribble on your slides. That isn't out of the question, but it would put a cramp in my style of pacing madly back in forth in front of the class.
I'll have to give the daily quiz/homework idea some thought. I probably can't do it this quarter, but I could maybe implement something like it for next quarter. I wish I had a TA.
Radagast, I just reread your comment. Precisely because the image is so high, I actually could implement your suggestion!
AP, this is probably too late for this semester, but let me tell you what was regularly done at my undergrad institution (a medium sized public research university) and seemed to work fairly well. I will admit that poor attendance did not seem to be an issue at said institution and as I understand it, this is not true everywhere.
Few of my profs took attendance at all. Those who did tended to just pass around a sign-in sheet and collect it at the end of class or whenever. After some initial grunt work, this only takes a few minutes to keep track of in an Excel sheet or Access database sheet, even w/o a TA. Attendance, however, was not used as requirement for the class, but could help you in the long run as in, "I will look more kindly at grading time at those who attend class regularly which could definitely help anyone whose grade is bordering between a B and C or A and B or whatever."
I don't have the same amount of experience, but as a student and TA, I was always of the idea that students should be treated like adults. If they choose to act like children, they still have to face adult consequences.
It's always struck me that if attendance isn't necessary to complete the work and pass the tests than it shouldn't be required; If a student can simply show up for the final and pass it why not? What good does it do to force them to attend the lecture of a course they obviously shouldn't have signed up for.
If, on the other hand, the student arrives for the final to discover that they have missed huge chunks of important material, so be it - at least, one hopes, they've learned something from the experience.
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