Attendance and participation grades can account from anywhere from five to 20 per cent of a student’s final course grade. However students, professors and experts say attendance, particularly in early classes, may not be the key to academic success.
Carleton’s Teaching and Learning Services (TLS) advises faculty to build their class attendance policies keeping in mind that learning is synonymous with attendance. It advises caps on allowed absences before receiving a failing grade, graded tutorial attendance, and mandatory attendance.
Martha Mullaly, a TLS spokesperson, said attendance is difficult to regulate because there are “as many reasons as there are people when it comes to classes and attendance.”
Some students even said the time a class is offered may prevent them from enrolling in the course.
“Everyone is different—I am not a morning person so I avoid any 8:30 classes,” said Alake Mills, a second-year global and international studies student.
“Anyone having taken an 8:30 class can remark that attendance suffers in these classes, but is weighed nonetheless when it comes to final grades,” she added.
Yochannah Fowler, a first-year law student, said the earliest class in the day should be moved to a later time because few people are performing optimally that early in the morning.
“If people aren’t functioning at that hour, how does it make good sense to have a class then?”
Although mandatory attendance may seem unfair, studies have shown a strong correlation between frequent attendance and good academic performance.
“Attending class is the key to reaping the rewards of academic achievement,” reads a study from ScienceDaily that tracked undergraduate medical students’ attendance and grades in 2018.
However, the study also said students who were confident performed well regardless of attendance.
“[A]ttendance at in-class sessions is no longer a good marker for those who will do well in a course,” reads the article.
“Life happens, shit happens,” said Neven Leddy, a Carleton history professor, of his reason for not making attendance mandatory for his classes.
He added 8:30 a.m. is a “sub-optimal moment to teach” university students because they are unlikely to wake up that early in the morning to attend classes.
Leddy also said he notices some students stop attending full-year 8:30 a.m. classes in the winter term, calling them “ghost students,” who sign up for classes but seldom physically attend them.
“We know that 8:30 is a challenge, so we somehow have to make this work for our students and if that means mandatory attendance, that’s the lesser evil,” he continued.
Carmen LeBlanc, a Carleton French professor, said classes should begin at 10 a.m.—citing transportation and environmental issues.
“To have classes be held at 8:30 a.m. puts you in the thick of rush hour,” LeBlanc said.
“The start time of classes to 10 a.m. puts less stress on the transportation system, and consequentially the environment with all that time spent sitting in a car on the jammed highway here in Ottawa,” she added.
Despite some discontent from faculty members, Leddy said graded attendance may be a “condition of employment” for faculty, leaving them with no choice but to implement the policy.
“It should be about finding the best solution for everyone,” LeBlanc said. “The answer to that conundrum is a policy-level solution.”
“People between the ages of 18 and 21 have enough going on trying to figure out life, without fighting their biology to have to get up at six in the morning to get here at 8:30.”
Featured image by Saarah Rasheed. With files from Lahari Nanda.
