<p>
[quote]
Skipping Class? Sensors Are Watching</p>
<p>By Andrea Fuller</p>
<p>Students at Northern Arizona University who hope to skip large lecture courses may have more trouble doing so this fall: The university is installing an electronic system that measures student attendance.</p>
<p>The university is using $75,000 in federal stimulus money to install the system, which will detect the ID cards students are carrying as they enter large classrooms, The Arizona Republic reported on Tuesday. (The cards can be read by an electronic sensor.) Faculty members can choose to receive electronic attendance reports.</p>
<p>Karen Pugliesi, vice provost for academic affairs, says the project will help improve attendance, which is key to higher academic performance ...
<p>Seems a bit Big-Brotherish to me, but maybe by the time my own son goes to college, I'll be grateful for any dose of in loco parentis that's out there.</p>
<p>Parents of current college students, what do you think? Would you be glad to have your kids' attendance monitored electronically?</p>
<p>I’ll respond as both a parent and as someone who has taught college. </p>
<p>As a college faculty member, I did keep track of attendance as it is important given the nature of the courses I taught (not lectures). So, in some college classes, attendance counts and I suppose if the lecture is large, the electronic monitoring is a way to take attendance efficiently. </p>
<p>As a parent, I know that in the classes my kid took at her studio (conservatory) at NYU/Tisch, the attendance policy was such that a student may only miss two classes in a semester in a course and any more than that results in lowering a grade a full letter grade. I have no problem with that. </p>
<p>In many classes, being in class truly matters. I suppose this is a little less so in a large lecture where you can obtain notes. But in classes where you are active in class and so on, missing class is quite detrimental as not all the learning takes place outside class time. </p>
<p>So, I am not against taking attendance in college classes from the perspective of being on the faculty and also being a parent. Having attendance policies for grades is not a bad thing.</p>
<p>I suppose an argument could be made that if a student can do very well in a class, who cares if they attend the class? But on the other hand, there likely is some correlation with how well you do in class with how much you actually attend the class!</p>
<p>My S had two such classes last semester. Students were required to purchase “I-Clickers” for the classes. These were both large auditorium size classes. Attendance counted. Grade would be lowered for poor attendance. The I-Clickers were coded with the students’ college ID. They had to "click in " at the beginning of every class.</p>
<p>The I-Clickers were also used for quizzes. They have “ABCD” buttons on them to indicate the students answer choice.</p>
<p>D also had the clickers for all her large lecture classes for 4 years at UNM. Also used them for pop quiz and in class lecture question and answer sessions.</p>
<p>My son used clickers in large lecture halls too and they were used for attendance. Of course you could just give yours to a friend to click in for you in the lecture hall.</p>
<p>I have the feeling that this might make for a good challenge for electrical engineering students to find a way to clone student ID RFIDs. It would be funny if one student walked in the lecture hall and the attendance system indicated that every student was present.</p>
<p>Materials to clone RFID tags are easily purchased on E-bay. One needs a reader to get the information and then a blank RFID to add the information to. </p>
<p>Enforcing attendance can be very beneficial for both the schools and the students. I do agree that as 18+ year-old students they are adults, but not all young adults are responsible. If attendance enforcement does help improve student grades than graduation rates should increase and this is a big plus for all parties involved. As a parent I would see this as a positive reason to send a child to a particular college.</p>
<p>This is ridiculous. At college it is up to the student to get their behinds out of bed and go to class. If they fail, they have to live with the consequences…This system is big brotherish and babys students…at some point, you gotta let us GROW UP…if not at 18, when? If they aren’t mature enough to get themselves to class, maybe they aren’t mature enough for college</p>
<p>rocket…- post #10- YES! College is not mandatory, lecture attendance is usually helpful but tying grades to it??? Parent here. Over the years I have seen posts from parents whose child has done poorly and lack of class attendance was a major contributing cause. There is no need to monitor attendance. The student is paying for the course and should get what they pay for, ie the information given in class. If they choose to not do so it is their choice. Any professor/lecturer who finds a lot of absent students should rethink their lecture style/content. Worthwhile lectures will not be missed by students. If the content is all or mostly available elsewhere they may as well read it instead of wasting their time sitting in a chair… Or do students need to occupy the chair and do homework for other courses?</p>
<p>Anybody note the irony of “stimulus” money being used for a computer card reader to replace a job that used to be done by an actual worker: calling the attendance role?</p>
<p>Maybe they could have used the money to hire official attendance takers and create a few jobs? </p>
<p>Any guesses on campaign contributions from the company that sells the attendance taking card readers?</p>
<p>Are the I-Clickers prevalent among many colleges, or primarily among those where there is a need to improve academic performance, i.e., retention and graduation rates? Which are, in turn, tied to the famous UNSWR rankings?</p>
<p>I tend to agree with #10. The use of the clickers to monitor attendance seems like an extension of helicopter parenting.</p>
<p>Also, so what if you show up (because you don’t have any EE friends)? You can spend the entire hour texting and not hear a word the prof says. Focing people to show up doesn’t help anything. You have to go because you want to go or there’s no point. In a small class where attendance really means things, the prof can easily take attendance himself. In a lecture class where such a device is “useful” it doesn’t help anyway.</p>
<p>Clickers, from son’s experience, are used in large science lecture halls to provide feedback to professors on whether the students are getting the material that they are presenting. Professors have projectors (on their laptops I assume) that display student voting results.</p>
<p>That they can be used for attendance is a bonus I guess.</p>
<p>Students spend a decent chunk of change for the clickers. They can get some of that back by selling them back to the bookstore.</p>
<p>Son had a course in a lecture hall that seated a thousand people. If you didn’t get in early enough, you were pretty far away from the board and might not even be able to see the question written on the board.</p>
<p>Many schools also videocast lectures in lecture halls so that students can watch them from their dorm rooms when they feel like it. Of course they then can’t ask questions.</p>
<p>I have never understood taking attendance. The exception is if someone’s presence or absence impacts the class or a group. With that aside, I evaluate my students upon what they learn-- as an outcome. How they get there- whether they attend or not, read the book, study hard- is not my concern. </p>
<p>I try to ensure that there is huge value in attending class (you can not do well without being present). If there is not already a very strong correlation between attendance and knowledge of the course material, something is seriously wrong with the professor. </p>
<p>The last thing I want is to micro-manage my students, treat them like children, or for them to somehow get the impression that ‘showing up’ somehow buys them grades. It does not.</p>
<p>There’s an economics course at Berkeley that they make available to the world. The class starts out full (lecture hall) and then attendance drops and drops and drops and the professor starts pleading with the kids to attend, then gets angry, threatens, etc. The decline is fairly steady through the end of the course.</p>
<p>I assume that the kids in the course are good students doing fine with the material and that they’re watching the videos.</p>
<p>^ I agree. And why does the professor care, I wonder? Does he take it as a personal affront? Are the students who choose not to attend not losing out? If they are, its their loss, not the professors; if they are not losing out, the class is rather pointless for many. And besides, why would a professor not want a smaller class? I thought we’d all rather teach a smaller class filled with the most interested students that <em>want</em> to be there than a larger class with a bunch of kids just putting in face time and surfing on their laptops.</p>
<p>“Forget inner city school blight - let’s spend our taxpayer dollars to take electronic classroom attendance at the college level!”</p>
<p>I agree that it’s a waste of taxpayer money, but if 75K is going to anger, I bet I could tell you (or someone could tell you) something that would have you going to kill the governor of your state. President is probably hard to kill.</p>
<p>One thing I like to do, go to classes for the same course that I’m not in. Sometimes a professor sucks, sometimes there’s a better one teaching the same class. I want to go to that one, not the one where I’m not learning anything.</p>