![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coffeesnob318One of my students is doing her persuasive speech on making attendance mandatory. I didn't know I had an opinion until I started writing. Then I clicked "send" before really thinking it through. Great. Just one more opinion that alienates me from my conservative students. Can't wait until she uses me as a source.
Attendance should be mandatory. At this school, we're allowed to give rewards for good attendance, and that helps, but it does not solve the attendance problem. At another school where I teach, I am allowed to drop students after however many absences I claim in the syllabus (for a long semester, I've allowed 6, which is still a lot of absences). My attendance in those classes is significantly better than in classes here, and students who aren't attending leave the semester with a W on their transcript, which looks much better than the F they would receive if I didn't drop them. Therefore, giving instructors the ability to drop for non-attendance is not only helpful to us, but to the students as well.
In other semesters here, I have been advised to make attendance part of the grade without "technically" making it part of the grade. For instance, I used to give daily quizzes in class over reading or lecture notes, and students were not allowed to make up the quizzes, so they had to be there in order to get credit for them. However, all it turned out to be was a lot of useless busy work for them, and a sea of paperwork for me. In addition to being a waste of time and paper, it also brought students' grades down, because it was basically a mini-test every day, and no one has time to prepare for that! So even students who were there every day suffered instead of getting rewarded, and I could not see how that was fair. So that idea tanked.
Now, I give the reward of being exempt from the final or getting extra points on it at least, and that works better - it's definitely simpler. However, it still does not solve the problem, because students who have attendance problems still miss a lot of class. That may not matter in other classes, but in a class like this one, their attendance doesn't just affect them - it affects those in their group, who get nervous and frustrated when they can't get ahold of them, and it affects the classroom dynamic - they tend to get more nervous during speeches, because they haven't been there, so they're basically speaking to a bunch of strangers. Showing up is an essential part of communication, so it should be an essential part of the requirements!
The most popular argument against a mandatory attendance policy is that students are paying for classes, so they should get to choose whether to go or not. Let me break it down. (I even gave her a link to the tuition and fees page, which I should have made her look up herself, but hey - I was on a roll)
At TCC, a student who lives in the district pays a base of $30 per semester hour (so $90 for a 3 hour course). Out of district - add $12 a semester, so $126 per course. Out-of-state students pay $140 per semester hour, so they pay significantly more - $420 per course (which is almost what an in-state student would pay at a university). Yes, this looks like a lot. However, it is not even one-tenth of the actual cost of the education received in that course. Education is very, very expensive. That's why the education tax seems so high. The tuition that the average TCC student pays every semester doesn't even cover his/her share of the electric bill, much less anything else.
So who IS paying for their education? Taxpayers. Generous patrons and community organizations. Alumni of the college. Attendance should be mandatory because students owe an enormous debt that most of them could never afford to pay to the community that makes their education possible. It is an affront to said community that we don't have a mandatory attendance policy.
So I probably gave her way more than she wanted to hear. Hope she was intending to argue in favor of it, because the person grading is apparently biased.
Attendance should be mandatory. At this school, we're allowed to give rewards for good attendance, and that helps, but it does not solve the attendance problem. At another school where I teach, I am allowed to drop students after however many absences I claim in the syllabus (for a long semester, I've allowed 6, which is still a lot of absences). My attendance in those classes is significantly better than in classes here, and students who aren't attending leave the semester with a W on their transcript, which looks much better than the F they would receive if I didn't drop them. Therefore, giving instructors the ability to drop for non-attendance is not only helpful to us, but to the students as well.
In other semesters here, I have been advised to make attendance part of the grade without "technically" making it part of the grade. For instance, I used to give daily quizzes in class over reading or lecture notes, and students were not allowed to make up the quizzes, so they had to be there in order to get credit for them. However, all it turned out to be was a lot of useless busy work for them, and a sea of paperwork for me. In addition to being a waste of time and paper, it also brought students' grades down, because it was basically a mini-test every day, and no one has time to prepare for that! So even students who were there every day suffered instead of getting rewarded, and I could not see how that was fair. So that idea tanked.
Now, I give the reward of being exempt from the final or getting extra points on it at least, and that works better - it's definitely simpler. However, it still does not solve the problem, because students who have attendance problems still miss a lot of class. That may not matter in other classes, but in a class like this one, their attendance doesn't just affect them - it affects those in their group, who get nervous and frustrated when they can't get ahold of them, and it affects the classroom dynamic - they tend to get more nervous during speeches, because they haven't been there, so they're basically speaking to a bunch of strangers. Showing up is an essential part of communication, so it should be an essential part of the requirements!
The most popular argument against a mandatory attendance policy is that students are paying for classes, so they should get to choose whether to go or not. Let me break it down. (I even gave her a link to the tuition and fees page, which I should have made her look up herself, but hey - I was on a roll)
At TCC, a student who lives in the district pays a base of $30 per semester hour (so $90 for a 3 hour course). Out of district - add $12 a semester, so $126 per course. Out-of-state students pay $140 per semester hour, so they pay significantly more - $420 per course (which is almost what an in-state student would pay at a university). Yes, this looks like a lot. However, it is not even one-tenth of the actual cost of the education received in that course. Education is very, very expensive. That's why the education tax seems so high. The tuition that the average TCC student pays every semester doesn't even cover his/her share of the electric bill, much less anything else.
So who IS paying for their education? Taxpayers. Generous patrons and community organizations. Alumni of the college. Attendance should be mandatory because students owe an enormous debt that most of them could never afford to pay to the community that makes their education possible. It is an affront to said community that we don't have a mandatory attendance policy.
So I probably gave her way more than she wanted to hear. Hope she was intending to argue in favor of it, because the person grading is apparently biased.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
hey Miss Coffee
guess what I finally saw the episode Vortex I think, the one where it opens with Lex waiting for his dad on the heliopad. very sexy and hot and Clark and Chloe were so sweet. stupid Lana though!
take care
toodles
CLC
Re: hey Miss Coffee
Date: 2003-07-30 05:27 am (UTC)Yeah, as a student, I would not have been in favor of mandatory attendance, especially my freshman and sophomore years when I was usually too...let's say "spirited" to go to class. I never would have made it. Either that, or I would have been less spirited, which would have been a good thing. lol