Student Attendance (PGCHE Reflection)
We sometimes have problems with student attendance.
Nothing new there but I was having a rant about it the other day to a colleague and here are some points from that rant (by the way I know there are sometimes good reasons why students do not attend things and I vigorously defend individuals when such circumstances arise):
Poor attendance is often, though not always, symptomatic of poor engagement with the module or course.
People who rarely attend all term and then turn up expecting lashings of one to one attention for the last session or two are going to be sorely disappointed. Special circumstances aside, choosing not to attend, and then expecting a crash course in module contents at the end of term just will not work. So forget it.
I felt really sorry last week for three people who had made the effort to attend a 9 am seminar as the numbers were too low to do the planned exercises. In other seminar groups that week, with greater numbers, I used a worksheet to guide the students through a series of exercises, which I think they found interesting and helpful (always a good combination). But the small group in front of me were not going to get the benefits of those exercises because they simply would not work with such small numbers.
Whilst it is reasonable to expect lecturers to have a fall back plan if, for example, the IT infrastructure fails (and even then it is not always possible) we simply do not have the time to devise exercises to work with poorly, okay, or well attended, groups. We know the numbers on the system and yes we can improvise but there are limits to what you can do where you expecting groups of around 20 and you get one of precisely three.
Students who fail to attend on a regular basis are also letting down their fellow students because they are not there and making contributions to the in-class debates and so on. As an individual the value of their contributions may vary but in terms of certain exercises then their presence alone may bring in certain benefits from the “network effect”. Difficult to measure but very probably there!
See article on network effects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect and on Metcalfe’s Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect.
Nothing new there but I was having a rant about it the other day to a colleague and here are some points from that rant (by the way I know there are sometimes good reasons why students do not attend things and I vigorously defend individuals when such circumstances arise):
Poor attendance is often, though not always, symptomatic of poor engagement with the module or course.
People who rarely attend all term and then turn up expecting lashings of one to one attention for the last session or two are going to be sorely disappointed. Special circumstances aside, choosing not to attend, and then expecting a crash course in module contents at the end of term just will not work. So forget it.
I felt really sorry last week for three people who had made the effort to attend a 9 am seminar as the numbers were too low to do the planned exercises. In other seminar groups that week, with greater numbers, I used a worksheet to guide the students through a series of exercises, which I think they found interesting and helpful (always a good combination). But the small group in front of me were not going to get the benefits of those exercises because they simply would not work with such small numbers.
Whilst it is reasonable to expect lecturers to have a fall back plan if, for example, the IT infrastructure fails (and even then it is not always possible) we simply do not have the time to devise exercises to work with poorly, okay, or well attended, groups. We know the numbers on the system and yes we can improvise but there are limits to what you can do where you expecting groups of around 20 and you get one of precisely three.
Students who fail to attend on a regular basis are also letting down their fellow students because they are not there and making contributions to the in-class debates and so on. As an individual the value of their contributions may vary but in terms of certain exercises then their presence alone may bring in certain benefits from the “network effect”. Difficult to measure but very probably there!
See article on network effects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect and on Metcalfe’s Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect.
posted by Phil at 3:56 AM
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