Attendance

Goal

To design tips and principles for class attendance policies when social distancing is important, but also to develop policies and best practices to deal with absences if illness occurs.

Principles

  • Attendance isn’t enough; engagement from the students is necessary.
  • Accommodate multiple ways of “participating.”
  • Be flexible with disparate student circumstances. Anyone with symptoms of any kind should stay home without penalty.
  • Consistency in expectations and technological tools across different courses and colleges will be essential for keeping students organized and informed. At a bare minimum, consistency should be maintained across all sections of a course. Ideally, students will experience consistency across different courses.
  • Getting students to show up for any kind of class in its available format(s) is more important than the class being perfect.
  • Here we focus on methods that are easily scalable by a single instructor.
  • Recognize and consider feasibility in light of accommodations students have, such as needs for extra time on quizzes or medical conditions that interfere with various formats

Recommendations

General Practices

  • Express your expectations about attendance in the clearest, most explicit, specific terms on day one of class and in your course syllabus.
  • By default, offer multiple alternative options for participation so that those who are self-isolating for any reason have ways to earn credit without asking for accommodations.
  • Reduce student requests by forgiving a certain number of absences automatically for all students without needing any excuse.
  • In this way, “attendance” and “participation” can be mandatory for all, with the clear idea that no one should attend in person if they have any symptoms of illness.
  • Structure activities and points earned to keep students accountable for regularly “showing up.”
  • Choose activities and ways of grading that are transparent for the students but NOT labor intensive for faculty.
  • Use technologies and tools that are vetted and approved and supported by OIT.
    • Use Canvas for as much as possible.
    • Do not use unsupported software/tools unless they offer essential functionality for supporting your class’s learning goals.
    • Information about supported technologies and accessibility is available on several ¶¶ŇőÂĂĐĐÉä Websites, including:

Practices for the “lecture” component of large classes

  • All lecture periods will be 100% remote for large classes.
  • If teaching synchronously, the following methods could allow forattendance and participation credit:
    • Give a reading quiz at beginning of class period, delivered on Canvas, available only during class time (make time during class for this).
    • Give a brief quiz during the last 5-10 minutes of class, delivered on Canvas.
    • Use and give students points for posing questions or answering questions during a specific time window (e.g., during the 24 hours after a lecture). Use a rubric to clarify expectations and to facilitate consistency in grading. This likely needs to be moderated by a TA.
    • Use to poll students or ask questions during the lecture period. Encourage and take follow up questions.
  • If teaching asynchronously, the following methods could be considered to allow for attendance and participation credit:
    • Reading questions assigned on Canvas (specific due dates and times).
    • Post-lecture video viewing questions assigned on Canvas (specific due dates and times).
    • Use to have students answer questions during their viewing of a pre-recorded lecture video.
    • Use and give students points for posing questions/answering questions during a specific time window. Use a to clarify expectations and to facilitate consistency in grading. This likely needs to be moderated by a TA.

Practices for Encouraging Attendance and Participation in Recitations or Small Section Meetings of Larger Classes

For synchronous, in-person offerings

  • Offer a “hyflex” (hybrid-flexible) format all semester.
    • Offer every meeting by Zoom.
    • Record every meeting with Zoom’s functionality and post afterwards.
    • Count in-person and remote attendance equally.
  • Choose activities and discussions that do not require shoulder-to-shoulder work.
    • Use () and to create working groups (whole enrollment of small group or break into smaller groups) and share documents, spreadsheets or presentations.
    • Set up where shared documents, spreadsheets or presentations can be uploaded or follow up questions can be answered for group credit.
  • Keep remote attendees in the loop.
    • Use two devices, one for yourself to project content, and one to show remote attendees the room.
    • Keep an eye on the chat and “raised hand” features of Zoom.
    • Restate comments made by participants from either
      format.
  • Assign students to complete journal entries or responses on Canvas by the end of the day.

For synchronous, fully remote offerings

  • Use Zoom’s breakout rooms and call on each “Room’s” participants to share out after breakout rooms are “closed.”

For asynchronous offerings

  • Many of the recommendations above might apply.
  • Have students sign up for required 1-on-1 zoom meetings on a regular basis for “checking in”.
  • Well-scaffolded independent projects based upon students’ passions, combined with regular check-ins. This likely needs to be moderated by a TA.
  • Use Canvas Collaborations/Groups but allow student groups to schedule their own time for group work with a deadline for completion. Use Canvas Individual Assignments or Group assignments to assign credit.
  • Use . To assign participation credit, use and give students points for posing questions/answering questions during a specific time window. Use a to clarify expectations and to facilitate consistency in grading. This likely needs to be moderated by a TA.

Lessons Learned from spring 2020

  • A general “Attendance and Participation Policy” is not effective in the remote environment. In the spring, credit based solely on attendance and participation in group worked before going remote. In-person it was easy to give students who weren’t participating a nudge and a warning about participating. But once going remote, if a student was muted with their camera off, it was impossible to tell if they were engaged or even present! In the rush to finish spring, specifically calling on students for questions seemed to work ok. For fall 2020 consider having each group turn in a group document afterwards for credit. Google docs make it easy to collaborate synchronously and in “suggesting” mode, it is easy to tell who contributed to the document.
  • Many students would appear to behave as if “online attendance” is optional. Actually, many of us made it this way in spring 2020 as we tried to be extra flexible given the very difficult circumstances. We will have to change this expectation and perception.
  • Some students really dislike “online participation.” It feels useless and impersonal to them. How do we give them a more human experience that keeps them motivated?