Technology and Class Attendance

Guess what? If you lower the cost of missing class, less students show up. This article notes that when more material is posted for classes, attendance is lower. I've noticed the same thing. There is a very clear association between how much I post and class attendance and because of this, I have stopped posting as much review material. I thought it gave students a false sense of security. They would skip class thinking they could make up what was lost with web-based material later, then find out when the test time arrives that the posted material is not an effective substitute for coming to class, or that they have waited too long to get started making up missed material. That's when I start getting frantic email. It appears to me that it is the students on the margin who most easily fall victim to this temptation.

On the other side, though, are the students who make effective use of the posted material. They show up to class as always, and use what I post as a complement, not a substitute, to lectures. I am reluctant to allow class policy to be dictated by the students who are more interested in obtaining a piece of paper than learning, so I am rethinking my policy about posting material. I don't think my classes should be less effective for the best students just because other students cannot resist the temptation to sleep in on a cold and rainy morning knowing that lecture materials will be posted to make the sleep less costly. This isn't high school where it's the state's job to make sure every student is educated. In college, students must begin learning to take responsibility for their own education and I should not let some students to be held back in an attempt to force those at the other end of the spectrum to come to class, read, ask questions, and learn the material. Still, it's hard not to structure incentives so as to get the most out of every student rather than just the subset who are most interested in learning the course material:

Skip class? You've got online pal, Detroit Free News/LA Times, by Stuart Silverstein:  Skipping classes, particularly big lectures where an absence can go undetected, is a tradition among college undergraduates who party late or swap notes with friends. These days, professors are witnessing a spurt in absenteeism as an unintended consequence of adopting technologies originally envisioned as learning aids.

One of Azevedo's Classes

Last semester, Americ Azevedo's class on "Introduction to Computers" at the University of California, Berkeley, featured some of the hottest options in educational technology. By visiting the course's Web sites, the 200 students could download audio recordings or watch digital videos of the lectures, as well as read the instructor's lecture notes and participate in online discussions.

But there was one problem: So many of the undergraduates relied on the technology that, at times, only 20 or so actually showed up for class. "It was demoralizing," Azevedo said. "Getting students out of their media bubble to be here is getting progressively harder."

Even as many academics embrace electronic innovations, others are pushing back. To deter no-shows, professors are reverting to low-tech tactics such as giving more surprise quizzes or slashing online offerings.

"Too much online instruction is a bad thing," said Terre Allen, a communication studies scholar at California State University, Long Beach.

Last term, Allen posted extensive lecture notes online for her undergraduate course, "Language and Behavior." One goal was to relieve students of the burden of scribbling notes, freeing them to focus on the lectures' substance. Yet the result, Allen said, was that only about one-third of her 154 students showed up for most of the lectures. In the past, when Allen put less material online, 60 percent to 70 percent of students typically would attend. ...

Kelly A. Rocca, an assistant professor of communication at St. John's University in New York and one of the few scholars who has recently studied American college absenteeism, said she suspects that skipping class has reached an all-time high because of off-campus jobs and reliance on technology. To combat ditching in her own classes, Rocca refuses to post notes online. With undergraduates, she said, "the more reasons you give them not to come to class, the less likely they are to come." ...

Other research supports the common-sense belief that skipping class hurts a student's grades. Lee Ohanian, a UCLA economics professor, said he notices that frequent skippers often "are the ones who are doing just enough to get by. The ones who are getting the A's are in the front row at every lecture." Ohanian said "too much technology really leads to a passive learning environment" and spurs absenteeism. He has cut back on posting lecture materials online and now provides extensive notes only for the most complicated topics.

Despite concerns about absenteeism, schools increasingly are experimenting with ways to let students watch or listen to lectures on their computers or digital music players, ... Likewise, online, or "distance," education programs -- premised on students' not needing to be in class -- are growing.

Advocates of the new technologies say they give schools an effective, low-cost way to deliver instruction while freeing students to review material at their own pace. The online options also let students participate in discussions electronically and allow instructors the flexibility to make quick changes.

Update: Brief follow up at iLecture.

Comments

[battlepanda]

If there were some objective test that we can administer to find out whether those electronic aids are hurting or helping students in the aggregate, that would be really interesting. Obviously, it is a problem for professors if they find that students are forsaking classes because they can always fall back on canned lecture notes, and no wonder those students do worse, because they are also most likely to be the unmotivated ones. But there could be tremendous implications for education if it is found that highly motivated students learned as well through on-line aids as through attending classes.

[cbm]

Password protect your web posted materials, and then only give out the password to those who come to class. You can change the password each class, so students have to come to get the updated password. Sure, students who don't come can get the password from another student, but it still increases the costs enough that some, who would otherwise not show up, will show up.

[Hit The Bid]

As a recent grad student, there was no comparison to when i was an undergrad back between 1991-1995. Being a student was much much easier...and not necessarily in a good way at all.

I really think posted material is no substitute, even though I tried to do that many times. I think you should hand out pass-codes or adopt some mechanism whereby you can reward those students that come to class with access to the complimentary materials--no come to class, then no access to those materials.

[save_the_rustbelt]

I'm back in the classroom after a ten year absence, and after some experimentaion I am using very few of the high tech goodies.

Students want to sit back and let me show them the work on a screen, rather than to get engaged.

Back to chalk, with high tech backups.

[Dan]

I'm sorry but I really don't understand how this is an issue. When did a professor get the social mandate of ensuring that the most students attend the classroom lecture as possible? If some students use material in a manner in which they are not intended and have a poor understanding of the material, which results in a poor test score, what is the big deal? It is called a life lesson and it is much better that they learn it as a student compared to the consquences if they learn it as an employee in some company later in life.

[Emmanuel]

This is very easy to solve. Allocate marks based on class participation or attendance, say, 10 to 20% of the overall grade. Case closed.

[slink or swim]

god how dismal

this is pure presumption and nonsense

u be
in loco mentaurus eh doc ???

says...

I definetely would agree that when professors post notes, it really makes lectures much more effective and minimizes the amount of writing that we do. By minimizing our writing, we can pay more attention to the professor without having to worry about keeping up with the writing on the board.

Posting notes does not go without its benefits to the professor too. The factors of production for a lecture tend to be a mix of labor and capital. Labor being the professor speaking and writing. Capital being powerpoint slides and overhead projections. All too often do professors rely on one input and fail to balance between the two. Mark, you will save time, energy, and chalk by not having to write every detail from your lecture notes on to the board.

I strongly suggest you posting your notes that you prepare before lectures. Not only will it help the good students, but it will save you time and money. All in all, it will allow for a more productive and efficient classroom experience.

[y]

If prof. Azevedo has had his lectures video taped, is it possible that next time when he teaches the same material, he can require the students to watch the tape before attending each class, and thus skipping the "dull" part of the lecture and turn the class (even better is smaller) into a simultanous discussion? It might be more prodcutive for the students who really want to learn!!! I am just not sure of university policy gives Professors the freedom to do it.

In general, in a market place, the more choices the better; so I don't see why this is not true in education. Make use of the more choices!

[ed]

I attended Stanford for graduate work around 2000. Almost all of my prof's posted their complete lecture notes online. Almost all of the courses were recorded on videotape and available in the library. For the auditorium filling classes, the absentee rate was maybe 30%. However, for the smaller advanced courses the absentee rate was below 10%.
If the environment is competitive, the work challenging and the students motivated, this is an excellent educational tool and greatly aids learning.
If unmotivated idiots believe that they can learn without attending lecture, asking questions and thinking, they deserve the results they get.

[RP]

It's all about efficiency. Many students work to pay for school.

Low priority on class reservation? Guess what - you get the bottom of the barrel professor that no one wants but the university hasn't fired because they don't know they need to....you'd only attend their..ahem...lecture if there were zero alternatives. Any online notes would serve as a complete substitute for these professors, even though the professors thought themselves the cat's meow.

The best professors have to drive students out of their lectures with a stick...online material or not.

Methinks the bad professors will rail against online postings because it makes visible what all students already know...their lectures are worthless.

[cm]

When I went to grad school, we had to copy down the lecture with pen & paper (taking down the verbal remarks that didn't make it to the blackboard was a challenge). Skippers could be accomodated by using 1+ carbon copies, with the optimization tradeoff of generating enough pen pressure for a good copy while not piercing the top paper layer (hey we didn't have copy machines).

Even with the old joke "a lecture is the process of copying material from the lecturer's notes to the student's notes without passing through the brain of either", I'd think lecture handouts and slides have the potential of reducing engagement on both sides.

More often than not, lectures are interactive, and writing on a "live" medium like a blackboard may be better suited to further develop an idea, modify the course of the presentation, or upgrade/extend an illustration in real time in response to a question. And a large foldable and movable blackboard can hold more material than a slide, allowing for easier cross references, and simultaneous presentation of complex matter. The often seen alternative is using dozens of sequential slides, zooming in & out of detail, and the stacks of paper from printing all that out.

OTOH with prepared materials, you can still use a live board, but incorporating the live material into the prepared notes may be a challenge.

And I have some doubt whether the "time to think" argument is not oversold. Thinking is a rather ephemeral process, and fixating the thought in script or illustration greatly enhances retention.

Maybe it's my lack of imagination. In addition, when slides were arriving on the scene in my later college years, there was a clear tendency to show off with fancy-shmancy presentations.

[cm]

Emmanuel: Sorry, no. Grades must be based on subject-matter performance (that's what they are supposed to measure), not "butt-in-chair" brownies. Like at work, "always sends emails at night" vs. "puts results on the table".

[anne]

When classes are compelling, with not the most or least technology involved, there is never a problem with attendance.

[cm]

anne: You mean, compelling as in the class starts 8:00 and you have been partying and chucking drinks until 1:00? It is not that skipping class is uniformly distributed. There are clear correlations with time of day, day of the week, and "extracurricular activities". I'm wondering whether faculty compensates for this by "framing" the less popular (but deemed necessary) lectures with popular ones to discourage skipping (once you are on campus, you may as well go to class). But then where/when I went to college, things were more strictly managed, and the basic curriculum was not left to students' whims. Now we have freedom, but it is hard to accept it comes with responsibilities ...

[Yartrebo]

"Password protect your web posted materials, and then only give out the password to those who come to class."

A few instant messages and the password will be known by all the slackers. Also, some class materials are of some use to the world as a whole and putting a password means that it cannot be used by people outside the class. I fairly frequently come across class materials while searching with search engines and some of the stuff is very useful material, particularly in fields such as engineering where fairly little is posted on the internet because most of it is locked up in books.

Lots of the stuff is junk that should never have been written, but when I really want the answer, I'm willing to wade through it.

[cm]

Yartrebo: The real underlying issue is whether it is the educator's job, or if you will, role to enforce attendance on the part of students, or whether the amenities of educational facilities are an offering to those who want to learn.

That question can be posed for all education levels, with the understanding that high school graduates should have the maturity to figure this out for themselves, and take responsibility.

The caveat is that in a society where education is understood as a service delivered for a fee paid by the student, and against a background where there is a well- or ill-considered concept of "accountability" on the part of educators but not students, this may create a sense of entitlement on the part of the latter.

[David Locke]

Maybe podcasts should supplement and augment. I can remember lectures that were never successful, because the professor was displaying a lot of data, and then asked us only to note the trends. We couldn't get the content captured, so a podcast of just that would have been fine.

Then, aument the podcast itself with literature references, so the students read more.

I have to go to class. I read everything beforehand, so reading the lecture after isn't going to happen. It wouldn't help me. What helps me is taking thinking notes, because I'm not copying everything he says down. I'm writing down the thought triggers for recall.

Unfortunately, instructional technology puts technology first and instruction last. Technology puts technology first and the subject matter domain last, always. So finding the way around the constraints is pushed out to the future. When hardware issues get hard, they pass off the problem to the operating system, then the programming language, and then the application programmer where the cost of the solution is several times higher.

To the person that finds professor lectures useless. Take a different professor.

Most students only want to be "on" a subject, rather than "in" a subject. "In" is completely different from "On." It's a cultural divide. Technologies reinforce this cultural divide.

Podcasting looks like so much work for so little return. Build it into the lecture hall itself and make it automatic.

[Vince W.]

I strongly advocate that all professors post video lectures on a publicly accessible site.

If one sees this as an isolated component upon which to vote yes or no, it would be hard according to incentive theories to advocate posting online lectures. Students would not have the incentive to go to class.

However, if this is but one component that interacts with other components in determining a students grade I would strongly advocate this. I would strongly advocate using the lectures as background material for assessing and grading participation in class. THis might best be suited or most successful for a seminar style class where the instructor guides a dialog with the student based on the on-line lectures.

Furthermore, posting on-line lectures has externalalities or external benefits:
1. Students and instructors outside the university benefit from viewing the online lectures
2. Instructors dont have to reinvent the wheel as far as teaching the same subject. They have an online resource to compare and use as fodder for their lectures.

[Vann]

Some professor’s lectures are more painful than the worst forms of torture, making any form of alternative a reprieve for the lowly student. Efficiency is very important to look at in this issue to. Can students get a relatively good amount of information out of the class per time spent on the class, solely using online information?

Suppose, I can get a B in a course, and only have to commit 2-3 hours a week to online (video lecture) study and an hour of text review, as apposed to an A by 4-5 hours of lecture, and two hours of text study (lets face it, text almost always has to supplement lecture, especially if the professor is verbose or hasty). That 2-4 hour difference could be spent on studying for other classes, sleep, etc. If another class requires an extra hour of study to gain a one letter grade better (C to A takes two more hours a week), I am going to go the take the B route for the other class, and raise my overall grade point average. It is pretty much an issue of marginal utility.