As both a private college and university instructor, I’ve frankly often deliberated on this issue. At the college, attendance is taken and tracked, while at the university it is not. It isn’t a question of trust or control, it has to do with the learning process and test scores and their effects on both cumulative education as well as Federal funding.
As a student (neither undergrad nor graduate), I don’t think I’ve ever been under an attendance-taking process but I’m still intrigued at that question: Would required attendance actually improve learning?
And the follow-up question: What other processes would help to enhance it in either case?
Weigh in please!
Original article by Lee Bains on Switched:
High schoolers have long grown broad-smiled and wide-eyed when regaled with their older friends’ college stories — parties, sleeping late, football games, and, amazingly to think, no attendance requirements. While those youngsters need not fear that all-night ragers and tailgating will fade into obscurity anytime soon, it may be a different story with class attendance. At least one college, Northern Arizona University, has begun using electronic scanners to track students’ attendance at lectures.
“We do have to say to a lot of students that it really is important that you do show up to class,” NAU associate professor Brandon Cruickshank told NPR. “You are not going to do well if you’re not here.” Buttressed by the arguments of professors like Cruickshank, NAU has decided that, starting today (the first day of the academic year), students will be required to swipe their ID cards upon arrival at large lecture classes. Citing low graduation rates and large numbers of five-year students, the university may be secure in its decision, but many of its students are not.“I don’t see why we need to be told what to do anymore,” junior Rachel Brackett told NPR. “I feel like it’s a move toward… treating us as though we were juveniles.” While we are pretty sure that, as college students, we would have reacted in a similar way, we are absolutely sure that, when we were college freshmen, we sometimes ignored the pleas of professors like Cruickshank, and inevitably paid the consequences. Take that for what it’s worth, kiddies. It will be on the exam.