Attendance verification for online courses.

[downer]

One school I teach at was in the past rather relaxed about attendance verification, but now seems to be freaking out about it, going on about "federal requirements" as if there has been some big change in the law. It is asking faculty to get the students to do an "online quiz" about the syllabus. But it isn't really a quiz because it is not scored. It partly seems to be a way for the admin to check that faculty are including all the "required" elements of syllabi. And the answers do not go to the professor who is teaching -- it goes to the admin. So it's all very strange. I expect that lots of students won't get around to do an ungraded "quiz." Then the admin will freak out more, asking faculty to remind students to do the "quiz".

At other schools, they don't seem to have any official policy as to what counts as attendance for online -- logging on, saying "hi" in a discussion, or doing some graded work. Seems to be up to the professor to decide. Does it make any difference what criteria we use, or if we just go with our gut feelings?

[polly_mer]

It absolutely matters for financial aid purposes.  Logging in alone is not sufficient to show participation online.  Students are supposed to be doing a submitted activity on a regular basis to show participation, not attendance, for federal financial aid.

However, there's also a requirement for starting the class when the class starts.  Allowing self-paced courses is correspondence education, not distance ed.  Thus, students who don't participate by the local census dates are supposed to be dropped as not really enrolled and their financial aid adjusted accordingly.  Messing that up as an institution is how one gets fined and perhaps banned from participating in the federal financial aid programs.

It's true the rules haven't changed, but now it's far more likely the institution will be closely examined for meeting the rules.

[RatGuy]

I think it's useful to have students have some sort of task early in the semester that demonstrates their ability to engage in the kind of remote delivery you're providing. That might mean an online quiz, or attending the first scheduled virtual session, or finding and posting to a discussion board. As an assessment it doesn't need to be graded -- it just allows you to say "ok, these students can do the thing I'll want them to do for the next 15 weeks." Whatever that is, that's up to you.

I'll also add that the teleconferencing module within out LMS has attendance capabilities, but the instructor sets the parameters. That means if a student is tardy at 10 minutes and absent at 20, then the system's report will show that. It also allows me to see when a student logs in and out, and the strength of their connection (some students have connectivity issues). I just run the report after class, and I don't have to worry about policing attendance during the session.

[downer]

It absolutely matters for financial aid purposes.  Logging in alone is not sufficient to show participation online.  Students are supposed to be doing a submitted activity on a regular basis to show participation, not attendance, for federal financial aid.

I have not heard of any schools asking faculty to verify regular activity from a student when doing their attendance verification.  Do any schools actually ask this? In fact, I've not seen any schools require faculty to make students engage in regular activities from the start of the semester. Academic freedom allows faculty to make the first activity the midterm. That's even true for online courses.

[Hegemony]

If the course has regular assignments, which I assume it does, it should be easy enough to see whether the student is doing them. I suppose it's vaguely conceivable that a student is logging in frequently but not doing any assignments, but I've never actually heard of it happening. In any case, a syllabus quiz doesn't seem necessary provided it's not weeks and weeks before the first piece of evidence of actual involvement with the course. My online courses have multiple things due weekly (discussion board participation, quiz, short writing assignment).

[downer]

Attendance verification is generally required within the first two weeks of the semester. I don't think all faculty require any assignments in the first two weeks - or maybe the due date would have to be earlier if the work has to be graded in order to check the involvement of the student.

[mythbuster]

We started Monday and our attendance portal opened today. Yes I require a syllabus quiz (auto-grading) the first week, especially in my online courses. I write the quiz myself, so it's specific to my course. It's an easy thing to get them to do. I set it as unlimited attempts, and you can't open the rest of the content until you score at least an 80%. It does have a due date at the end of the first week.
   Students who don't complete the quiz I then flag to their advisor as well as mark as non-attending to financial aid.

[polly_mer]

In fact, I've not seen any schools require faculty to make students engage in regular activities from the start of the semester. Academic freedom allows faculty to make the first activity the midterm. That's even true for online courses.

Financial aid administrators across the country just cringed at that misapplied idea of academic freedom.

There must be a mechanism to discern which students are participating in online education for federal financial aid purposes.  Merely logging in is not sufficient. 

Read through some of the https://www.nasfaa.org/pop_quizzes and see what you learn about federal financial aid.


You might also want to read https://wcetfrontiers.org/2012/04/20/correspondence-definition/ and the new proposed rules at https://wcetfrontiers.org/2020/04/03/new-regs-review-1-regular-substantive-interaction/.

[downer]

In my experience there's can be a big gap between financial aid regulations and what schools do to comply with them. Maybe things will change soon and schools will insist that faculty build their syllabi around the need to monitor student compliance. But it sure as hell isn't happening this fall.

[Hegemony]

Attendance verification is generally required within the first two weeks of the semester. I don't think all faculty require any assignments in the first two weeks - or maybe the due date would have to be earlier if the work has to be graded in order to check the involvement of the student.

My feeling is that online courses should have required discussion boards (discussing aspects f the course topic) every week, for student engagement. Anyway, mine do.

[downer]

Attendance verification is generally required within the first two weeks of the semester. I don't think all faculty require any assignments in the first two weeks - or maybe the due date would have to be earlier if the work has to be graded in order to check the involvement of the student.

My feeling is that online courses should have required discussion boards (discussing aspects f the course topic) every week, for student engagement. Anyway, mine do.

Mine do too. But that's not my point. I'm struck by the lack of clear instructions from colleges as to what counts as attendance in online class, and the mismatch between recording attendance and what is actually required to qualify for federal aid. I have not seen any colleges insisting on weekly assignments early in the semester or requiring faculty to confirm that students are doing those assignments. No one inspects the syllabus to make sure that faculty are even requiring weekly assignments. And if the admin did do this, I imagine that there would be plenty of protest from faculty about admin overstepping their bounds and infringing on their academic freedom, (whether or not that sense of "academic freedom" matches what other people think it means).

[onthefringe]

I think there are two separate things going on here.

First, Title IV requires that students attend their classes in order to receive aid. My university requires us to document attendance/participation for the first week, and to report students who don't attend or participate during week 1. We do have a list of things that count and they include attending a face to face or synchronous online meeting, completing an assignment, participating in an online discussion board, oran email from the student to the instructor initiating a discussion about the course material.And then at end of the semester we submit a different failing grade for students who stopped attending vs students who completed the class and failed anyway.

Second are the requirements from the Higher learning commission that a distance learning course (as opposed to a correspondence course has "regular and substantive" interactions between the instructor and the students (though this interaction does not need to be synchronous.

Where I am, there is an approval process for distance learning classes, and it requires a syllabus that requires weekly substantive interactions with students in order to fulfill both the HLC requirements anfpd the Title IV requirements.

[downer]

I think there are two separate things going on here.

First, Title IV requires that students attend their classes in order to receive aid. My university requires us to document attendance/participation for the first week, and to report students who don't attend or participate during week 1. We do have a list of things that count and they include attending a face to face or synchronous online meeting, completing an assignment, participating in an online discussion board, oran email from the student to the instructor initiating a discussion about the course material.And then at end of the semester we submit a different failing grade for students who stopped attending vs students who completed the class and failed anyway.

Second are the requirements from the Higher learning commission that a distance learning course (as opposed to a correspondence course has "regular and substantive" interactions between the instructor and the students (though this interaction does not need to be synchronous.

Where I am, there is an approval process for distance learning classes, and it requires a syllabus that requires weekly substantive interactions with students in order to fulfill both the HLC requirements anfpd the Title IV requirements.

I'm impressed that your school has specified what counts as attendance for an online course. That seems rare.

Now that a lot of people are basically attempting to put their regular classroom courses online, courses that were not designed as online, it seems that the second issue of "regular and substantive" interactions is becoming more acute, since those courses don't build in weekly assignments. One of my chairs explicitly wrote to the faculty that the synchronous classes would be like the classroom classes, but just online.

[kiana]

We have plenty of required activities (usually biweekly or triweekly homework assignments at the lowest level) and we certainly aren't allowing people to disengage, but we haven't had discussion boards in our online classes.

I might need to put them in this semester and I'm not looking forward to it. They're a hard sell in a prealgebra/algebra class, especially if I don't want to reduce the homework.

I really don't like blanket policies.

[dr_codex]

I think there are two separate things going on here.

First, Title IV requires that students attend their classes in order to receive aid. My university requires us to document attendance/participation for the first week, and to report students who don't attend or participate during week 1. We do have a list of things that count and they include attending a face to face or synchronous online meeting, completing an assignment, participating in an online discussion board, oran email from the student to the instructor initiating a discussion about the course material.And then at end of the semester we submit a different failing grade for students who stopped attending vs students who completed the class and failed anyway.

Second are the requirements from the Higher learning commission that a distance learning course (as opposed to a correspondence course has "regular and substantive" interactions between the instructor and the students (though this interaction does not need to be synchronous.

Where I am, there is an approval process for distance learning classes, and it requires a syllabus that requires weekly substantive interactions with students in order to fulfill both the HLC requirements anfpd the Title IV requirements.

I'm impressed that your school has specified what counts as attendance for an online course. That seems rare.

Now that a lot of people are basically attempting to put their regular classroom courses online, courses that were not designed as online, it seems that the second issue of "regular and substantive" interactions is becoming more acute, since those courses don't build in weekly assignments. One of my chairs explicitly wrote to the faculty that the synchronous classes would be like the classroom classes, but just online.

As I'm sure you know, there's a difference between "distance" and "online".

Distance courses can be synchronous. Attendance then is just a matter of keeping a record of who signed on to the synchronous session. (Just as most students who sleep through class aren't marked as non-attending, those who are playing video games on the side during a Zoom session won't be.) But online courses do need to have something that substantially replaces the face-to-face time. Otherwise, they are easily abused (no-show classes for student athletes, diploma mills, visa workarounds for international students, etc. etc.) In fact, the absence of physical presence in online courses became an acute issue for international students; it's an advantage for those who do not want to get visas, but hinders those who do.

If your place doesn't have something in place to signal "never attended" and "stopped attending", you guys need to do so immediately. It matters for financial aid, and sometimes helps students claw back tuition. Yes, I know that there are campus cultures in which attendance is basically optional, but as we've discussed many times, the surveillance of online courses is particularly intense. For good reason.

If what you're really offering is distance education, then a policy check might be in order. Otherwise, read the roll and move on.