[W]hen a professor simply stands in front of the room, reads the PowerPoint word-for-word and tells us what we already learned from nightly readings, students will mentally check out.
… Students will go to class if professors consistently teach material that students did not already learn while reading the textbook.
… If professors give us something valuable during lecture, we’ll be there to take it.
The opinion piece is in response to a new national trend: mandatory attendance. How did mandatory attendance come about?
Professors who teach nothing teach no one. Students don’t attend their classes.
Empty classrooms (No one’s here to watch me read my slides!) make professors look bad, so these professors eventually make attendance mandatory.
It’s a variation on the old communist-era saying, We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us. Here it’s I pretend to teach and you pretend to learn.
But while professors seem to have a high threshold for futility, students have a low one. After all, students are paying to play pretend; professors get paid.
If students won’t play along, if they won’t be good sports, some of these professors will suddenly drop the whole it’s all a game thing and force them into the room. Students will respond by playing on their laptops.
The wired classroom student: Casper The Unfriendly Ghost.
November 1st, 2010 at 9:42AM
What if classes were periodically put on video and made available for friendly critique by the professor’s departmental colleagues? I would think that peer pressure would lead to a rapid improvement in quality, except in those institutions where things are already so bad across the board that the peer pressure would work in the other direction…
November 1st, 2010 at 11:11AM
Hmm… where to start?
Mandatory attendance? Is this high school we’re talking about?
If the lectures – or presentations, or whatever – are worth it, the students will be there… If there is no “value added” – God how I hate that phrase – then that is the fault of the instructor.
As for quality assurance-
At some of the good places, the rookies are helped by more senior faculty who are excellent teachers. They are also offered the opportunity to improve their skills and try other approaches in voluntary workshops. Even senior faculty invite others to sit in on their classes a couple of times a term for constructive feedback. The places where these kinds of things happen are the usual suspects: Carleton… See USNews rankings of schools that have outstanding professors.
Why do people put up with this kind of stuff at GW, UD? (I know, it isn’t just GW. It happens here, too.)
November 1st, 2010 at 11:41AM
I’m pretty sure that *rhetoric* was one of the classic Liberal Arts. Seems to me there’s a case for public speaking–including the development of arguments, the use of effective and persuasive language, responding to challenges in a debate format–as part of the standard undergrad curriculum. I can’t think of too many careers requiring a college degree in which rhetorical skill is not of value.
November 1st, 2010 at 2:19PM
There are a few things wrong with this article. First, while I agree that professors should not use Power Point or rely heavily on tangential film “study”-type activities, I don’t think that those poor lesson plans are the only reasons as to why students don’t come to class. I also don’t think that professors who use those techniques are the only ones who are requiring attendance.
Point of context, I’ve taught public high school, community college, and classes at four-year research universities, and I haven’t seen much difference in any of those populations with respect to general student disinterest and boredom. To be clear, I radically adjust my teaching style based on the demographic I’m teaching, and on the whole, I receive great student reviews. Aside from the various pockets of students who won’t be interested in my class(es) no matter what I do, I tend to keep my students engaged.
All of which really justs reaffirms my point: There will always be students, no matter what, who will aggressively work not to be engaged. While I agree in theory that those students should just be left to flounder on their own–or, in those rare instances, prosper on their own by doing all of the reading and writing independently (I’ve yet to meet any of these mythical brilliant, motivated students who have no interest in sharing their ideas with their peers in class)–I run my classes either as seminars or intensive writing workshops, which means that I need bodies in the room. If students don’t attend, then my class suffers all around–for everyone involved. (And this might be another problem with the article–it doesn’t really take into account different class types. For better or worse, it’s hard to know how a professor of a three-hundred-person lecture is going to keep everyone interested. Those professors probably aren’t taking attendance, though, unless they’re using those new clicker devices that have become so popular.)
So I’ve made my peace with a rather clunky justification for requiring attendance. As a rule, I respond promptly to all student emails; I am always available during my designated office hours; I am always prepared for class; I I will offer commentary on paper drafts; I will respond kindly to all inquiries; I will respect my students as learners. In return, I demand that they come to class. If they can’t meet me there, which isn’t even halfway, then their final grades will suffer. That’s my social contract. Add in, or drop the class.
Also, when those final grades do suffer, I can bring my attendance log to my department chair and/or dean to say, “See, Suzie last attended class in September. She missed two out of three writing assignments. Etc.”
November 1st, 2010 at 2:28PM
I too hate mandatory attendance. But, in running a discussion oriented classes (as required by the department for some levels of classes), how to get the critical mass
On the other hand, if students haven’t read the material and just come to occupy the space, there isn’t much discussion anyway. I don’t teach at an elite institution.
My own children quit reading texts when in tertiary institutions because the “profs” just went over what was in the texts in class. Maybe this happened at the secondary level too. But I found myself swimming against the tide when I expected the readings to be the springboard to what happened in class.
Now I teach online from overseas. If they don’t read the text, they are clueless about what is going on. The drop rate is about 50%. I would say that it reflects better reading than reading rates for my in person teaching.
Am I a poor teacher? Possibly but I’ve gotten high ratings from engaged students and invited observing professors (I wanted my teaching critiqued).
But I was unable to engage students who thought of themselves as customers, there because they had bought a degree. I told them that they had bought the right to be in the classroom, not any particular grade.
November 2nd, 2010 at 7:39AM
I take attendance in lower level classes because it indicates clearly to the little buggers that I expect them to be there. These classes are also the most likely to be populated with whiners, and it usually takes the wind out of their sails when I pull out the attendance book and say, “Gee Sally, you missed 15 of 38 classes this semester. Do you suppose that had any impact on your not learning the material?”
November 2nd, 2010 at 8:19AM
I HATE mandatory attendance. One of the classes I teach that is a “service” class requires it – I voted against it but all other faculty teaching the class wanted it.
It’s a giant pain. Students have four “freebee” absences, but the way it works here, students get bonus credit (yes. And I hate that too) at the end of the semester if they have perfect attendance. So I get people gaming the system: “But I have a DOCTOR’S appointment!” “I have to go with the rodeo team!” “I have a funeral to go to!” And I’m left deciding what counts as excused, or else being the mean ogre who excuses NOTHING.
Besides, mandatory attendance doesn’t solve a lot of problems. If students don’t want to be there, they will find other ways to check out. I still have a hard time getting discussion going some days even with a nearly full class. If they’re not prepared, if they don’t even know what a stem cell is, there’s not much point having a discussion on the controversy surrounding them.
I cover material in class not in the textbook. Students who skip class – well, I tell their well-attending classmates it is entirely up to them whether they decide to share notes or not. Usually it works out on exams, where the people who attend regularly and participate earn good grades, and those who do not, don’t.
November 2nd, 2010 at 12:35PM
Students often feel that the material in the textbook and the material taught in class should be the same. They get angry, and mention it in no uncertain terms on their student evaluations, when there was classroom material not available in the assigned readings.
November 3rd, 2010 at 8:59AM
Actually, my impression is that attendance policies (my institution has an attendance-checking policy, though it’s loose enough that my spot-checking is acceptable, but not an outright mandatory attendance policy) are driven by financial aid accounting requirements (supplemented by Homeland Security furriner-tracking requirements).
That said, what In The Provinces says above is entirely correct: I explicitly say that my lectures don’t cover the same material, or at least not in the same way, as the textbook, because they’re intended to be supplemental to each other, but I get dinged on that in evals every time, in both upper and lower division courses.