Periodically collect written "exercises" and make them the basis of discussion. Give a practice exam problem at the end of a lecture on Scantron sheets. This is both a way to take attendance and to test students' retention of the material. Collect homework one week and return it another; students must be present both times to get credit.
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Note: Attendance is a requirement for the course. A person with above 75% of attendance is eligible to take final exams. A person with a percentage of attendance between 65 and 75 is required to submit a medical certificate. A person with less than 65% of attendance is not allowed to write the exam and has to do recourse.
Devote lectures to more in depth discussion and analysis. For instance, begin each class session with a question that you will devote the session to answering. This also leads to more focus and engagement. Practical Pointers on Preparing and Giving Lectures covers these ideas as well as others that will lead to more effective lecture classrooms.
Research studies have not shown mandatory attendance to insure a higher success rates for students.
Just one of many ways students can collaborate during lectures. Hand out three x five cards and ask students to jot down a question they have as result of the last 20 minutes. Have them pass the cards three or four people to the left. Ask various people if they can answer the question on the card they now have.
More person-to-person interactionIncorporate person-to-person activities in the classroom.Use peer-to-peer teaching as a method of delivery.Make time to support students, one-on-one to get through difficult tasks.Incorporate collaborative group work to learn from others and practice team/communication skills.More items...•
Teaching Tip: Taking attendance in large classesHave students sign in at the door.Assign students numbered seats and have them sign a seating chart when it is passed.Cut a seating chart into segments and circulate them so that each student can print last their name.More items...
3. Create an Atmosphere That Encourages ParticipationBe respectful.Speak loud enough so everyone can hear.Listen to classmates.Don't interrupt who is speaking.Build on your classmate's comments with your comments.Use participation to not only answer questions but to seek help or ask for clarification.
A great tactic to get students more actively involved is to use a breakout session, where students can talk to one another. Or open the chat window so everyone gets a chance to participate by typing their answers or comments, even if they're not all heard in the larger discussion.
With the right teaching strategies, you can succeed even when a class is large.Learn All of the Names. ... Use a Seating Chart. ... Make Clear Rules and Stick to Them. ... Be Active. ... Plan … a Lot. ... Have an Escape Plan. ... Keep Resources Accessible. ... Divide Students Into Teams.More items...
Google Form is one of the best ways to track student attendance during virtual classes. You can create an attendance sheet in the google form and distribute it with the class. The class will self-report the attendance sheet with the timestamp.
Let's get started with 10 popular tips.Create Urgency. People are far more likely to participate if they feel a sense of urgency. ... Be Hyper-Relevant. ... Solicit Earned Media. ... Leverage Social Media Strategically. ... Use Your Existing Contact List. ... Try Different Calls-to-Action. ... Offer Incentives. ... Leverage Community Groups.More items...•
Students participate more when they have a sense of what to expect. Also, prioritize the goals you set for a class session and be realistic. Planning only two or three goals and creating activities that promote discussion, debate, and deep learning is more effective than tackling many goals in a superficial way.
10 Tips for Increasing Participation in ActivitiesListen Carefully. Be patient and take the time to listen. ... Foster Friendships. ... Involve Relatives. ... Issue Invitations. ... Engage the help of Volunteers. ... Promote Exercise. ... Initiate Regular Meetings for Special Interest Groups. ... Offer Drumming Lessons.More items...
10 Strategies for Increasing Student EngagementProcedures and Routines. Clear expectations and consistency in your daily routines set the stage to engage. ... Frequent Discussion. Frequent Discussion Opportunities. ... Hands-On Activities. ... Small Group Instruction. ... Movement. ... Games. ... Student Choices. ... All Participation Responses.More items...
8 New Ideas for Engaging Online Students#1: Train instructors in online learning. ... #2: Give students a sense of ownership and control. ... #3: Plan for delivery diversity. ... #4: Be a storyteller. ... #5: Regularly update course content. ... #6: Assign success coaches. ... #7: Encourage accountability.More items...
5 ways to engage students in a hybrid classroomProvide the best audiovisual experience possible. A solid technical setup is a must-have. ... Set clear rules and be transparent in communication. ... Assign group work. ... Use polls for learning and feedback. ... Embrace the technology at hand. ... Conclusion.
If you want to reward good attendance, let students know how you will determine whether they come to class. Rather than penalize absences (by subtracting points), reward perfect or near-perfect attendance (by giving bonus points); the numerical result will be the same, but students feel better about the latter.
On the other side of the discussion, in 2013, Midland University in Fremont, Nebraska adopted an extremely tough “three strikes” attendance policy. “Once a student skips class, flunks a quiz or fails to turn in their homework (or any combination thereof) three times, the vice president for academic affairs, Steven Bullock, ...
Bugeja, who taught at Ohio University and Iowa, accepted any reason for not attending class (as long as a test or project presentation wasn’t scheduled) because he wanted students “to assess their priorities.”. He required students to email their excuse for the absence with the criteria that they be completely honest.
Low achievement in a course is usually due to a number of factors. Moreover, an attendance policy will not guarantee attendance. “Classroom environments that engage students, emphasize the importance of students’ contributions, and have content directly related to knowledge assessed will undoubtedly provide encouragement to students ...
LaFrance, an assistant professor of English and director of the writing-across-the-curriculum program at George Mason University, uses a prompted freewriting exercise at the start of each class as a means of both encouraging and taking attendance. Students receive points for each completed freewrite, but the exercises are not graded.
Research studies have not shown mandatory attendance to insure a higher success rates for students. An oft-cited article by Karen L. St. Clair, A Case Against Compulsory Class Attendance Policies in Higher Education, Innovative Higher Education, Vol. 23, No. 3, Spring 1999, examines and evaluates the research literature on the relationship between attendance and academic achievement. St. Clair applies Paul Pintrich’s model of college student motivation in the classroom to the issue surrounding attendance policies. [Paul Pintrich, Student motivation in the college classroom. From: K. W. Prichard & R. McLaran Sawyer (Eds.), Handbook of college teaching: Theory and application, Greenwood Press, 1994.] She finds that attendance is linked to motivation and required attendance does not guarantee high achievement. Low achievement in a course is usually due to a number of factors. Moreover, an attendance policy will not guarantee attendance. “Classroom environments that engage students, emphasize the importance of students’ contributions, and have content directly related to knowledge assessed will undoubtedly provide encouragement to students to attend regularly.” (p. 178-179) St. Clair notes that there are exceptions when it is necessary for students to attend class to demonstrate proficiency, for example, in foreign language and laboratory classes, small discussion sections or seminars where “…attendance is compulsory because it is part of the grading structure.” (p. 179). Otherwise, St. Clair concludes that class attendance should not be compulsory.
In their 2007 article for The Association of American Colleges and Universities, “Motivating Today’s College Students,” Crone and McKay contend that college students of the millenni al generation “have been raised on interactive technology and entertainment-style communication. We have been told by our students that straight lectures or PowerPoint presentations rarely hold their attention. Experiences that involve students and require them to interact as a part of their own learning are more likely to maintain their interest.”
In 2012, Dr. Michael Bugeja published an article in Inside Higher Ed titled “Attendance Not Required.” In this article, Bugeja includes his unique attendance policy for his Media Ethics course at Iowa State University:
Consider having your students sit in lecture with others from their section, and you can then direct exercises and questions to them by section. Not only will they be more inclined to engage with people they already know, but you will be reinforcing the importance of the sections and making the course seem more of a unified whole.
1) Hand out 3 x 5 cards at the end of the class and ask students to identify the major points covered. This can be anonymous or not. Collect them, skim them, and begin the next class by talking about their responses. Ask those students who were off to see you or their GSI, or to review their notes, etc. 2) Ask them to identify the “muddiest point” in the lecture. 3) Begin the lecture by soliciting questions (on cards or not) based on their reading for the day. 4) Stop a lecture at any time after a difficult topic and ask them to explain it to an intelligent high school student who knows nothing about the topic .
Steps to take: Read through your syllabus and mark every topic as either “essential” or “helpful.” Cut out all the “helpful” —move them to “suggested further reading.” If you’ve marked everything “essential,” ask a colleague to mark your syllabus the same way. If all else fails (and 90% of the time, you’ll be able to cut material), you need to redesign the goals of the class, perhaps in consultation with your department curriculum committee. But this is rarely necessary, if you are honest about what can be cut. Remember, you cannot teach everything in one course: it just doesn’t work. (And if you could, your students wouldn’t remember, anyway).
Lectures, particularly in large enrollment courses, should cover the following kinds of material: material of high interest/relevance to students. Steps to take: Read through your syllabus and mark every topic as either “essential” or “helpful.”. Cut out all the “helpful”—move them to “suggested further reading.”.
Six ways to make lectures in a large enrollment course more manageable and effective. 1. Establish learning goals. Once you and your students know where you’re going, the trip is easier and more efficient. And often the very act of creating learning goals results in reducing the amount of material to be covered, ...
By providing them with frequent feedback on their progress, you ultimately save time (and anguish). Not all assessments need to have grades attached. Quick, frequent, formative assessments help students to focus on areas they need work on, while also breaking up lectures and increasing student engagement.
I like this policy because it allows me to make my own decisions on attendance. For on-line classes my “attendance” is the punctual turn in of assignments and participation in forums, e-mails, etc. When a student gets behind in 3 consecutive assignments, they are dropped for lack of attendance. Needless to say I send out alerts, warning, etc.
The attendance policy at Foothill is pretty straight forward, leaving it up to the instructor. It reads as follows: “Regular and punctual attendance is an integral part of the learning process. As a Foothill student, you are expected to attend scheduled classes in which you are enrolled. An instructor has the authority to drop a student who violates written attendance policies. Instructors are not obligated to hold seats for students who are enrolled but do not attend the first class meeting.”
The fact is that usually the ten percent is not enough to change a student’s overall grade, but if he or she is bordering between an A and a B or a C and a D, the ten percent could make a difference. Most students seem to meet the challenge and surprise themselves with their good attendance.
None of the other answers I can see mention one good reason to take attendance: to produce a list of people present, so that in the event of a fire evacuation, it allows the university officials responsible for managing the evacuation to produce a list of missing individuals by comparing the attendance list with the list of people present at the fire evacuation site. That way, the fire fighters can know if they need to look for anyone in danger, and possibly where they would need to look for them.
A person with at least 75% of attendance is eligible to take final exams. A person with an attendance between 65% and 75% is required to submit a medical certificate. A person with less than 65% of attendance is not allowed to write the exam and has to do recourse.
Attendance is binary. They either attended or did not attend. If they turn up to your class and the class has a non-zero length of time left, then they attended.
I am from asutosh college . From this year CU has started semister system. So 75% marks is mandatory . Attendance is taken each and every period. There is 10 marks allotted for attendance. So teachers are very strict about attendance. Is someone has lower percentage then he or she can't appear in the next exam . If someone is absent for more than 5 days then the student has to submit an application to the HOD .
Had a class in first year computing. The lecture theatre was largest normally used and seated about 1200 from memory. You had to get there early in the first week as all the seats filled and they closed the doors when it got very crowded. Well over 2000 enrolled in the course and only one class time was available!
Students also have varying obligations, such as research presentations, conferences, personal situations, doctors appointments.
Lab classes obviously has mandatory attendance. You can’t perform the lab when you’re not there. You also can’t record data if you don’t perform the experiment. This is less a matter of infantalizing students, and more a matter of academic honesty and what is physically possible.
However, most students who miss lectures, particularly chronic non-attenders, do not perform well and do not take steps to ensure they learn the material. Here I echo the responses of Richard Muller, Jordan Boyd-Graber , and Joel Goldstein . These students have a knack for becoming a real drain on my time (ironic, isn't it?) and energy. They are frequently major complainers, and the most likely to write negative reviews or even complain to my department chair.
Most students are attending a university with a fair amount of grants, loans, or scholarships - many of which now require the university to submit attendance data to verify that you are still eligible to receive them. We have to track attendance and participation in order to help you keep your cash in hand and so that students who are receiving money but not attending can be correctly dealt with (I have been asked a number of times to provide a last-attended date to help government or private loan