It's time to end the consensual hallucination of fall in-person classes

[marshwiggle]

Getting off-topic from the thread but I wouldn't judge that professor's grade percentage for attendance until I after I knew what he required of students during each class meeting, what the other components of the course were, and how those components were linked to class attendance.

Here, I'll summarize this lousy excuse for a professional educator's curriculum plan.
40% of grade - attendance checks. No work. Just roll call checks.
60% of grade - 3 exams, with questions all pulled verbatim from master test banks that were fully available to students and encouraged for students to "review" ahead of time. Exam test question banks were just left on the LMS, never changed, never rotated.

Typical amount of "A" grade distributions for this instructor's courses: 90%
Typical amount of "A" grade distributions for most everybody else who taught this course: 10-20%

Yes, that doesn't mass muster. I see cheerful's point, however. You could imagine someone who had extremely hard tests and used a hefty attendance grades to both encourage students to come to class and give everyone a break.

That would be really weird, and would send a terribly confusing message to the students.
"Showing up is really important;  performance - not so much."

[polly_mer]

Getting off-topic from the thread but I wouldn't judge that professor's grade percentage for attendance until I after I knew what he required of students during each class meeting, what the other components of the course were, and how those components were linked to class attendance.

Here, I'll summarize this lousy excuse for a professional educator's curriculum plan.
40% of grade - attendance checks. No work. Just roll call checks.
60% of grade - 3 exams, with questions all pulled verbatim from master test banks that were fully available to students and encouraged for students to "review" ahead of time. Exam test question banks were just left on the LMS, never changed, never rotated.

Typical amount of "A" grade distributions for this instructor's courses: 90%
Typical amount of "A" grade distributions for most everybody else who taught this course: 10-20%

Yes, that doesn't mass muster. I see cheerful's point, however. You could imagine someone who had extremely hard tests and used a hefty attendance grades to both encourage students to come to class and give everyone a break.

That would be really weird, and would send a terribly confusing message to the students.
"Showing up is really important;  performance - not so much."

It's also a bizarre way to deal with classes that are supposed to be teaching something that merits difficult exams.  A checkbox class can be mostly attendance because the relevant student performance is checking that box on going through the motions to demonstrate being a rules follower.

The courses with which I'm familiar that have very low percentage of As are the ones acting as gatekeeper courses to weed out people who haven't learned what they need to learn.  The exams are usually difficult because the relevant performance is to integrate material to apply to new situations instead of mere recall or doing the same problems with different numbers or other minor details.

My experience as the professor and as the student in these situation is nobody bothers about attendance at all because attendance alone is irrelevant.  It's possible that attendance helps by having another presentation of the material with more examples.  It's possible that attendance is an opportunity cost because what's needed to master the material is to do many more problems to practice the integration and doing instead of watching so every hour watching is an hour not doing.

It is very worrying that a gatekeeper course is having high marks by substantially lowering the bar instead of through tremendous effort in scaffolding and guided practice for student mastery.  The attendance that helps give everyone a break is additional problem-solving sessions where folks can practice together with an expert to answer questions.

[Aster]

If you're a 75 year old retired guy who has zero experience in Higher Education other than possessing the minimum Master's degree to get hired, and you're adjunct teaching merely to supplement your own retirement income, you might do the bare minimum work, or even less than the bare minimum.

That was this guy. We only got rid of him when he decided to move away. Even then, he asked if he could still teach for us while living out-of-state.

[spork]

UMI is now under a stay-at-home order imposed by county health officials.

[Caracal]

Getting off-topic from the thread but I wouldn't judge that professor's grade percentage for attendance until I after I knew what he required of students during each class meeting, what the other components of the course were, and how those components were linked to class attendance.

Here, I'll summarize this lousy excuse for a professional educator's curriculum plan.
40% of grade - attendance checks. No work. Just roll call checks.
60% of grade - 3 exams, with questions all pulled verbatim from master test banks that were fully available to students and encouraged for students to "review" ahead of time. Exam test question banks were just left on the LMS, never changed, never rotated.

Typical amount of "A" grade distributions for this instructor's courses: 90%
Typical amount of "A" grade distributions for most everybody else who taught this course: 10-20%

Yes, that doesn't mass muster. I see cheerful's point, however. You could imagine someone who had extremely hard tests and used a hefty attendance grades to both encourage students to come to class and give everyone a break.

That would be really weird, and would send a terribly confusing message to the students.
"Showing up is really important;  performance - not so much."

Yes, not arguing for it. I've never had attendance count for more than 10 percent of the grade. I don't like to have effort grades (simple reading quizzes, attendance etc) count for anything more than 20 percent together. At 20 percent, if you got a perfect score on the effort parts, you could get average an 87 on all the other aspects of the course and just get an A-, or can squeak to a B- with a 75. I really don't like the idea in my classes of someone being able to average an 85 and get an A, or get a B with a low 70s score. Those numbers are still a little high for me, especially on the low end, and I've knocked that percentage down to 10-15 for most of my classes.

All that said, I don't really think it makes sense to think of grades in terms of some absolute standard. If someone's grades are much higher than the norm, or they can pass without acquiring a minimum knowledge of the material, that's not good, but you can calibrate that in different ways based on the difficulty of exams.

[Aster]

Yeah, we used to have discussions about extra credit and attendance grading quite frequently on the old CHE forums. I read those discussions intensely when I was much younger and newer to teaching. Much of my existing curriculum designs are the product of those many CHE discussions.

As I recall, the discussion consensus for extra credit and attendance-based grading was pretty consistent in not advising any more than 10% of a grade be determined by (non-academic) attendance checks or by extra credit. Many were much more inclined with 2-5% of maximum grades being determined that way. Very few argued higher than 10% for extra credit, and hardly anyone theorized past 15% for attendance checks. Most folks didn't grade for attendance at all.

Taking roll call is, after all, not actual academic assessment at all.

[marshwiggle]

As I recall, the discussion consensus for extra credit was pretty consistent in not advising any more than 10% of a grade be determined by (non-academic) attendance checks. Many were much more inclined with 2-5% of maximum grades being determined that way. Virtually no one argued higher than 10%.

I have 10% for active learning exercises which happen in some lectures, and people who are there for them get full marks. These exercises actually help students understand course material and concepts, so they have pedagogical value. I wouldn't go higher than 10% for those.

[Aster]

As I recall, the discussion consensus for extra credit was pretty consistent in not advising any more than 10% of a grade be determined by (non-academic) attendance checks. Many were much more inclined with 2-5% of maximum grades being determined that way. Virtually no one argued higher than 10%.

I have 10% for active learning exercises which happen in some lectures, and people who are there for them get full marks. These exercises actually help students understand course material and concepts, so they have pedagogical value. I wouldn't go higher than 10% for those.

Yeah, but what you're describing is doing work. That's much more than just simply calling roll. Completing exercises is active student participation with an integrated academic assessment measure. Neato.

[marshwiggle]

As I recall, the discussion consensus for extra credit was pretty consistent in not advising any more than 10% of a grade be determined by (non-academic) attendance checks. Many were much more inclined with 2-5% of maximum grades being determined that way. Virtually no one argued higher than 10%.

I have 10% for active learning exercises which happen in some lectures, and people who are there for them get full marks. These exercises actually help students understand course material and concepts, so they have pedagogical value. I wouldn't go higher than 10% for those.

Yeah, but what you're describing is doing work. That's much more than just simply calling roll. Completing exercises is active student participation with an integrated academic assessment measure. Neato.

Shhhh! Don't tell my students that! They just think it's something to  break up 90 minute lectures.

[apl68]

It's strange to me to see any portion of grading being based on attendance.  I went to schools where attendance was just understood.  If you were a student enrolled in class, you were expected to be there.  It was an unspoken cultural expectation.  That doesn't mean that every student was always there--I knew of a few screw-ups, including my own brother, who couldn't make themselves go to class without parents nearby to make them get up and go, and flunked out as a result--but they were outliers.  It's a revelation to me that there are evidently large sections of academia where attendance is not an assumed requirement.

[downer]

Where I went to school, we had lectures and tutorials. No attendance was ever taken in lectures, and they were given by different people from your tutor. So they were entirely optional. You went if you found them useful and were motivated, but not otherwise. Quite often I found the textbook much more useful than the lectures, and I stopped going.

I doubt that the way of providing the education was evidence-based, but it worked for me.

[Aster]

It's strange to me to see any portion of grading being based on attendance.  I went to schools where attendance was just understood.  If you were a student enrolled in class, you were expected to be there.  It was an unspoken cultural expectation.  That doesn't mean that every student was always there--I knew of a few screw-ups, including my own brother, who couldn't make themselves go to class without parents nearby to make them get up and go, and flunked out as a result--but they were outliers.  It's a revelation to me that there are evidently large sections of academia where attendance is not an assumed requirement.

No, it's mostly much more "popular" (for lack of a better word) at institutions with much higher ratios of college unready students enrolled in them. Open enrollment institutions, community colleges, teenier SLAC's or the SLAC's that heavily service the rich dude's slacker children, and for-profit dumpster mills. Many of these colleges only exist to service students that shouldn't be in college at all, but hey, it's a free country and Edu-Business is now Big Business.

Attendance grading is also common within a very few academic disciplines where there actually is some legitimate value for it (e.g. remedial education).

Attendance grading is also widely used by contingent faculty who don't hold long-term contracts and can be fired at will for not "performing effectively." In most cases, "performing effectively" almost completely revolved on filling classes to capacity and passing as many students as possible. So, grading students heavily on doing nothing but parking in a seat is a good way to make students happy.

But for most of us, yeah, grading on attendance just sounds dumb and like cheating for grades.

[Caracal]

No, it's mostly much more "popular" (for lack of a better word) at institutions with much higher ratios of college unready students enrolled in them. Open enrollment institutions, community colleges, teenier SLAC's or the SLAC's that heavily service the rich dude's slacker children, and for-profit dumpster mills. Many of these colleges only exist to service students that shouldn't be in college at all, but hey, it's a free country and Edu-Business is now Big Business.


Attendance grading is also widely used by contingent faculty who don't hold long-term contracts and can be fired at will for not "performing effectively."

But for most of us, yeah, grading on attendance just sounds dumb and like cheating for grades.

Never taught at any place that really met those definitions, unless you're applying them so broadly as to cover most of academia.

I'm contingent faculty and I don't grade attendance because I'm been cowed in to giving better grades. Attendance and quizzes are annoying in various ways and if I could teach effectively where I do without them, I'd drop them in a second.

I count attendance and reading quizzes for a small portion of the grade because otherwise too many students don't come to class and if they come they don't do the readings. I wouldn't worry about that if it was just the lower end of the course, but it spreads out from there and the result was that it was hard to teach effectively. You can't discuss the reading if only one student ever does them and if you have a class of 20 and only four people showing up by the end of the semester, it also gets rather difficult. When I started counting attendance and having regular quizzes, my classes improved dramatically.

I don't really like the idea of grading people on the things they are supposed to do anyway either, but I'm not so stubborn that I'm going to have bad classes without discussion or students just to prove a point.

[ciao_yall]

No, it's mostly much more "popular" (for lack of a better word) at institutions with much higher ratios of college unready students enrolled in them. Open enrollment institutions, community colleges, teenier SLAC's or the SLAC's that heavily service the rich dude's slacker children, and for-profit dumpster mills. Many of these colleges only exist to service students that shouldn't be in college at all, but hey, it's a free country and Edu-Business is now Big Business.


Attendance grading is also widely used by contingent faculty who don't hold long-term contracts and can be fired at will for not "performing effectively."

But for most of us, yeah, grading on attendance just sounds dumb and like cheating for grades.

Never taught at any place that really met those definitions, unless you're applying them so broadly as to cover most of academia.

I'm contingent faculty and I don't grade attendance because I'm been cowed in to giving better grades. Attendance and quizzes are annoying in various ways and if I could teach effectively where I do without them, I'd drop them in a second.

I count attendance and reading quizzes for a small portion of the grade because otherwise too many students don't come to class and if they come they don't do the readings. I wouldn't worry about that if it was just the lower end of the course, but it spreads out from there and the result was that it was hard to teach effectively. You can't discuss the reading if only one student ever does them and if you have a class of 20 and only four people showing up by the end of the semester, it also gets rather difficult. When I started counting attendance and having regular quizzes, my classes improved dramatically.

I don't really like the idea of grading people on the things they are supposed to do anyway either, but I'm not so stubborn that I'm going to have bad classes without discussion or students just to prove a point.

Our college decided to implement a policy that grade points could NOT be based on attendance, but didn't really tell anyone. So, many faculty continued to have their "X % of grade is based on attendance" sections.

Then a student who never showed up but did all her work decided to challenge her grade, found the policy online, and all heck broke loose.

[spork]

St. John Fisher College closes campus to students for the remainder of the semester:

https://www.sjfc.edu/update/.