Tips from the AEJMC Teaching Committee

Student Attendance: Being Present for the Teaching Moment

(Article courtesy of AEJMC News, March 2011 issue)

Over the course of my 30-year teaching experience at large public and small private institutions I have always been very understanding of students’ excuses as long as they were “valid” and their absences were “documentable and beyond their control,” such as a medical emergency, court appearance, funeral, out-of-town Varsity games, etc.

But all that changed last fall. When I asked a student who had missed class for a week because of a funeral to bring me the memorial service program, he sent me an electronic copy by email. I opened the file and reviewed the cover and back page, which contained a picture of what we thought was his beloved aunt. It provided details regarding the funeral home and service. The two inside pages, however, were missing critical information. It turned out to be a template that helped grieving family members through the process of writing the copy by providing generic text with [insert name], [insert song], or [insert place] throughout.

As Department Chair, I thought I had seen it all: Forged signatures on attendance sheets and doctor’s notes, even pictures of car accidents. This one topped the list. Apparently, my student went shopping at the online superstore for funeral program templates, conveniently available at www.funeralprogram-site.com

Without hesitation I reported the student to the university’s office of Student Conduct and Academic Integrity.

As of this year (what took me so long?!), I no longer distinguish between excused and unexcused absences, because in the end it does not matter. The bottom line is that a student who missed class missed a valuable learning opportunity in the classroom – physical or virtual.

I understand that some faculty do not have an attendance policy because they do not want to spend precious class time taking roll. Their argument is that, as long as a student submits good work despite multiple absences, the instructors don’t really care about attendance. I disagree. My experience has shown that the quality of the work usually suffers with extensive absences. Or, if the work of a habitually absent student is good, it may be likely that the work was purchased from a ghost writer or may include plagiarized material.

I also understand faculty who have a very strict attendance policy. As long as that policy is clearly spelled out in their syllabi I can support my faculty when students complain to me, the department Chair, about it.

Because there is no value in having an attendance policy if you do not enforce it, I have designed creative ways to take attendance without students even noticing it. I include interactive activities in my lectures. For example, I hand out index cards and have students write their name and the date on one side. At a certain point during class, I ask them to turn the card over and then assign them a task relevant to the topic and a specific point of the lecture. They may have to write a word, or a number, or a sentence, or even draw a picture. These are not graded assignments. (No points for attending class!) I use them as teaching moments during the following class period when I share the results of these “surveys” and show the drawings.

For online and hybrid classes, “attendance” may be documented using features of course management software such as BlackBoard and WebCT-Vista that record statistics on which students accessed the site, visited which folders and files, at what time and for how long.

That’s a convenient, indirect measure to take attendance as it relates to online presence in your virtual classroom.

So what is the real value of an attendance policy? For the “sage on the stage” it was a way to make sure to have an audience. For the “guide on the side” however, we are looking for conversation partners, interactivity, and dialogue.

Absenteeism, or lying about it, and bad grades are measurable symptoms. More often than not, they are the product of procrastination and poor time management. Here are a few treatments for those symptoms:

1) Teach or review time management skills as they relate to your course.

2) Command the students’ attention rather than demanding it by making experiential and collaborative learning essential elements of every class meeting.

3) For inspiration and guidance, refer to the body of knowledge provided by the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL).

Today’s students want to be active, interactive, experiential, mobile, and engaged. We can’t really expect these students to invest in learning unless they see dividends up front. It’s up to us to inspire and motivate them. So kick up your teaching a notch or two. Be compelling. Engage students in learning, and demonstrate the value of knowledge.

An attendance policy is part of that contract with our students we call a syllabus. We carefully spell out what we expect of students. But think about what they can expect from us. When we do our jobs well, our students will want to come to class – just to be present for the teaching moment.

By Birgit Wassmuth
Kennesaw State University
AEJMC Teaching Committee