What is an effective attendance policy?
The recent "compulsory attendance" issue that has struck India’s premier university, the JNU, has brought to the fore the debate on attendance policy. Universities, regulators, faculty members and students have always grappled with this policy. With empirical evidence divided and umpteen variation of this policy existing in the academic world, it is perhaps preferable to have an attendance policy that is firm yet flexible, which is in sync with needs of assessment among others and which keeps at centre the autonomy that a student needs.
What takes a student to the classroom?
Motivation, previous academic record, self-financing, quality of teaching and nature of class lectures are factors that influence attendance. However, "motivation" which drives our voluntary behaviours can be said to be the strongest driving factor of all. The level of motivation and the class context determines whether one wishes to attend a class or not.
The control that students have over their action, their environment, determines their choice. Another critical factor that drives attendance is quality of teaching, which varies from brilliant to sadly, pathetic.
Divided house of evidence
In the year 1986, a study was carried out in Oklahoma College of Medicine where it was seen that top scorers in Microbiology were either most infrequent or most regular attending students.
In a study in an elite business school in Portugal it was shown that absenteeism lowered students’ final grades but it goes on to argue for a compulsory, yet flexible, attendance policy. A meta-analysis published in 2010 revealed the strong correlation of attendance with class grades and GPA in college students and those mandatory attendance policies had "small" positive impact on average grades.
In another study in 2013 which critically analysed attendance policies of several universities, the analysis of attendance policy statements of universities revealed that the arguments used to push for stricter attendance policies were accountability in public funded higher education, concern for the academic welfare of students and preparedness for professionalism in future workplace. The paper, however, concludes that these rules infantilise students and do not help them develop capacity to make informed choices.
It can be safely said that research is divided on the issue of correlation between compulsory attendance policy and academic performance with enough counteracting evidence.
The need to attend classes
It is important to keep in mind the axiom that if the instructional activities require the presence of a student, then the student can only learn if he is attending the class. There are many activities where it holds true. Take for example a foreign language course or a laboratory setting; to grade conversational skills or to grade the performance of an experiment it is imperative for the student to be present. Apart from such examples, there are funding agencies which often demand compulsory attendance and it makes for a perfect reason to have one.
As a comparison, one of the key behind the attraction of MOOC’s is autonomous learning mode where the student and each of them have varied pace of learning, gets to regulate the speed of learning. But in the traditional didactic mode, and a majority of what we teach is still in this mode, there is no such scope.
Risking oversimplification if I am to ask, would you, the reader, prefer to attend, say 30 lectures of a teacher who goes too fast according to you which makes you lose both those 30 hours of time and more importantly your confidence?
The risk of oversimplification
There is clearly no black and white as far as attendance policies in higher education are concerned. That this is a complex issue and politicisation is writ large vis-à-vis JNU is a foregone conclusion. Attendance policy cannot be seen in isolation and as a panacea to problems that it is not meant to solve.
It is thus wise to acknowledge the role of a student, her autonomy, her power to exercise her choice, a central purpose of education per se. It is wise to model the attendance policy based on what kind of assessment methods an institution practices so that there is alignment of these both with the curriculum (trust me, they don’t more often than not) and lastly it is wise to consider available evidence and take all stakeholders including students, funding agencies, faculty members, regulators, administration in confidence before embarking on an attendance policy.