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

[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.

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.

I just don't really understand the point of a policy like that. There's a tendency to get all philosophical about grading, as if we are determining ultimate worth or measuring knowledge in some precise fashion. Clearly, however, grades are just a tool. We don't have classes so we can give students grades. We have grades in order to motivate students and provide an assessment of what they learned. Obviously the assessment should depend on the goals of the class. If the class is organic chemistry and its a weeding out class for pre-med, you probably only care if students have mastered the material. In other classes, however, the goals of the class won't be met if nobody shows up. Attendance is just a tool. It shouldn't count for very much, but there's not some moral issue involved in using grades to get students to do the things that will make the class work better.

[Cheerful]

Has anyone here mentioned the "stay in place" order at University of Michigan?  Ordered by county health dept.  Chronicle of Higher Ed has a story, mentioned in other media including CNN, etc.

Chronicle says more than 900 new COVID cases in past 4 weeks.

What a mess.

[marshwiggle]

I just don't really understand the point of a policy like that. There's a tendency to get all philosophical about grading, as if we are determining ultimate worth or measuring knowledge in some precise fashion. Clearly, however, grades are just a tool. We don't have classes so we can give students grades. We have grades in order to motivate students and provide an assessment of what they learned. Obviously the assessment should depend on the goals of the class. If the class is organic chemistry and its a weeding out class for pre-med, you probably only care if students have mastered the material. In other classes, however, the goals of the class won't be met if nobody shows up. Attendance is just a tool. It shouldn't count for very much, but there's not some moral issue involved in using grades to get students to do the things that will make the class work better.

I agree that grades (can) serve more of a purpose than assessing learning. However, if "the goals of the class won't be met if nobody shows up", how exactly does that translate to remote, asynchronous delivery? Does logging in to the CMS count as "attendance"? Or are there courses which rely on attendance that simply cannot be delivered in a remote, asynchronous format? (In a remore synchronous format, does it still work with students "attending" on Zoom with video off and muted?)

[spork]

Has anyone here mentioned the "stay in place" order at University of Michigan?  Ordered by county health dept.  Chronicle of Higher Ed has a story, mentioned in other media including CNN, etc.

Chronicle says more than 900 new COVID cases in past 4 weeks.

What a mess.

Yes.

People who want to discuss attendance policies should start a separate thread.

[Cheerful]

Spork, I saw you mention "UMI" the other day and I even googled "UMI" to try to figure out which U that is!  Thought it might be a place in Maine or Maryland, etc. I've not heard of.  Couldn't figure out.

I've always heard it as "Michigan" or UofM, not UMI.  Sorry for not referring to your October 20 mention.

[spork]

Spork, I saw you mention "UMI" the other day and I even googled "UMI" to try to figure out which U that is!  Thought it might be a place in Maine or Maryland, etc. I've not heard of.  Couldn't figure out.

I've always heard it as "Michigan" or UofM, not UMI.  Sorry for not referring to your October 20 mention.

I come from a place where USC is University of South Carolina and UNH is University of New Hampshire.

[jimbogumbo]

Spork, I saw you mention "UMI" the other day and I even googled "UMI" to try to figure out which U that is!  Thought it might be a place in Maine or Maryland, etc. I've not heard of.  Couldn't figure out.

I've always heard it as "Michigan" or UofM, not UMI.  Sorry for not referring to your October 20 mention.

I come from a place where USC is University of South Carolina and UNH is University of New Hampshire.

Same as Cheerful here re U of M. Feeling mentally weak, but what else would UNH be?

[FishProf]

I come from a place where USC is University of South Carolina and UNH is University of New Hampshire.

You came from a place bad at football?

[wareagle]

Spork, I saw you mention "UMI" the other day and I even googled "UMI" to try to figure out which U that is!  Thought it might be a place in Maine or Maryland, etc. I've not heard of.  Couldn't figure out.

I've always heard it as "Michigan" or UofM, not UMI.  Sorry for not referring to your October 20 mention.

I come from a place where USC is University of South Carolina and UNH is University of New Hampshire.

Same as Cheerful here re U of M. Feeling mentally weak, but what else would UNH be?

Where I come from, the U of M is the University of Minnesota.

[Vkw10]

Spork, I saw you mention "UMI" the other day and I even googled "UMI" to try to figure out which U that is!  Thought it might be a place in Maine or Maryland, etc. I've not heard of.  Couldn't figure out.

I've always heard it as "Michigan" or UofM, not UMI.  Sorry for not referring to your October 20 mention.

I come from a place where USC is University of South Carolina and UNH is University of New Hampshire.

Same as Cheerful here re U of M. Feeling mentally weak, but what else would UNH be?

Where I come from, the U of M is the University of Minnesota.

I also think SC when I hear USC, but my childhood weekends were marred by TV and two radios blasting in an attempt to follow Clemson, USC, Georgia Tech, and Tarheels football games.

There are eight states beginning with M and eight beginning with N. My third grade teacher required us to memorize states in alphabetical order. I can still write that list, since I practice in boring classes and meetings. The same teacher declared memorizing multiplication tables was a waste of time, but my mother made me do it anyway.

UNH - University of New Haven, maybe?

[Caracal]

Spork, I saw you mention "UMI" the other day and I even googled "UMI" to try to figure out which U that is!  Thought it might be a place in Maine or Maryland, etc. I've not heard of.  Couldn't figure out.

I've always heard it as "Michigan" or UofM, not UMI.  Sorry for not referring to your October 20 mention.

I come from a place where USC is University of South Carolina and UNH is University of New Hampshire.

Same as Cheerful here re U of M. Feeling mentally weak, but what else would UNH be?

Where I come from, the U of M is the University of Minnesota.

I also think SC when I hear USC, but my childhood weekends were marred by TV and two radios blasting in an attempt to follow Clemson, USC, Georgia Tech, and Tarheels football games.

There are eight states beginning with M and eight beginning with N. My third grade teacher required us to memorize states in alphabetical order. I can still write that list, since I practice in boring classes and meetings. The same teacher declared memorizing multiplication tables was a waste of time, but my mother made me do it anyway.

UNH - University of New Haven, maybe?

Isn't it New Hampshire?

[jimbogumbo]

I also think SC when I hear USC, but my childhood weekends were marred by TV and two radios blasting in an attempt to follow Clemson, USC, Georgia Tech, and Tarheels football games.

There are eight states beginning with M and eight beginning with N. My third grade teacher required us to memorize states in alphabetical order. I can still write that list, since I practice in boring classes and meetings. The same teacher declared memorizing multiplication tables was a waste of time, but my mother made me do it anyway.

UNH - University of New Haven, maybe?
[/quote]

That's what I figured after I posted. Not an East Coaster, so states were on my mind.

[spork]

Bethune-Cookman U. and Keuka College have gone online for the rest of the semester.

Bethune-Cookman has been a financial dumpster fire for years; I'm amazed it's still operating. Maybe this will finally kill it.

[Aster]

Bethune-Cookman U. and Keuka College have gone online for the rest of the semester.

Bethune-Cookman has been a financial dumpster fire for years; I'm amazed it's still operating. Maybe this will finally kill it.

That's an HBCU isn't it? Are those even allowed to close down?

[polly_mer]

Bethune-Cookman U. and Keuka College have gone online for the rest of the semester.

Bethune-Cookman has been a financial dumpster fire for years; I'm amazed it's still operating. Maybe this will finally kill it.

That's an HBCU isn't it? Are those even allowed to close down?

Non-public institutions can close for lack of enrollment and finances.  Public institutions can be closed as no longer meeting a need.  Often, public, special mission institutions get a more graceful transition focused on putting the students into better places.