Back when I taught at the University that’s Online for Profit (which I shall decline to name here despite its high public profile but you may refer to it by its acronym UOP) there would be names that would show up in the class roster but the people involved would do little more than check in and then kind of go away. They wouldn’t turn in any work, they didn’t participate in anything the class did, and, not suprisingly, they failed the class. UOP has a mechanised policy that students who didn’t at least log in to the class were eventually automatically disenrolled from it, one of the things that UOP did that I liked.
This doesn’t happen in live classes, and apparently it doesn’t happen in all online classes either. So, as our own co-blogger‘s co-blogger James Joyner chronicles, at least one community college is requiring instructors to track attendance and has devised a new way to fail such students out, in a manner that has less of an impact on their grade point average and is aimed at counseling them that they have to sort of attend class once in a while if they want to get a passing grade.
The policy sounds beneficent, and I’m sure the student counselors feel empowered to do their jobs when they’re armed with this information. But it seems doomed to failure to me.
The college can provide counseling to a student who won’t show up to class — the blockquoted example discusses a student who get bumped out of a class after four weeks of non-attendance who told her counselor that she wasn’t going to class because she hadn’t figured out childcare options, and then the counselor felt good about having a good conversation with the student about childcare. Here’s the point Prof. Joyner makes:
Now, this sounds like a pain in the butt for faculty members and is a degree of hand holding that shouldn’t be required for adult students. But community colleges exist primarily to help low income students, who are less likely to have developed some rather basic life skills. And it makes sense to not only help them not waste their money but expend at least minimal effort in training them to become successful students.
Point 1: It is a degree of hand holding that adults shouldn’t need or receive. End of line.
Point 2: It may have been the case at one time that community colleges exist to provide educational opportunities for low income students and that is probably still a part of the mission. But community colleges are also feeder-weeders for four-year institutions. And they dispense vocational education (e.g., fire science, paramedical training) for jobs that require some academic study but not a comprehensive liberal arts background.
Point 3: If we are talking about low-income students, there is the possibility that at least a segment of that population do not really want to go to college but find it convenient for credit or welfare eligibility purposes to claim that they are “students.” This is a way to game the system if you are so inclined. (Incorporate usual disclaimers about remarks not applying to those people using the system in good faith and for its intended purpose and inherent difficulty of institutions in distinguishing between gamers and good-faith users.)
Point 4: The student who hasn’t figured out that she needs to resolve child-care issues, the student who hasn’t quite put it together in his mind that listening to the professor’s lectures might be an important clue to figure out what the professor is going to test for, in short, the student who misses more than just the occasional lecture, ought to fail. If you just plain can’t get it together in your life, get out of the way so someone else can use the resources you’re squandering.
A failing grade represents an evaluation of that student’s academic achievement in the class, and not showing up to class is not an acceptable level of achievement. Failing ought to carry a consequence; there ought to be a disincentive to enrolling but not showing up. If there is no disincentive, then community colleges will fill up with students who do not really want to attend classes and consume all of the available space and other resources that otherwise would go to students who do want to attend and put in the effort. If the idea of the “cyber F” is to let students know how they are doing in class, well, that’s what midterms are for. If the idea of the “cyber F” is to not take the money of a student who fails out of a class due to circumstances beyond their own control, well, that’s what administrators with discretion to determine student tuition refund appeals are for.
Joyner goes on to make another point, one that I wholeheartedly agree with:
Online instruction might make sense for rote presentation of facts. But it’s a horrible way to reach the least academically prepared students. Almost by definition, self-study works only for those who are motivated to study and have the requisite skill sets to do so.
This is why I don’t teach for the University that’s Online for Profit anymore. With only very rare exceptions, the University that’s Online for Profit aims and markets itself at those customers who lack the requisite skill sets to succeed in the online educational environment — and there is a tacit understanding between the instructors and the institution that customers should get what they are paying for, and that means finding any excuse available to give students passing grades when they shouldn’t have been in college in the first place. This is particularly upsetting in what ought to be a “weeder” class, and apparently a traumatic experience for those of my students who seem to have never been critically evaluated by a professor before taking my course.
The “cyber F” represents another piece of coddling of students who ought to be weeded out of higher education but aren’t because of the incentives inherent in the online for-profit educational model — another reason why, after trying to use online education to actually teach something to my students, I grew frustrated and bitter and left that field entirely.
These are not children we’re talking about here. Adult students need to take responsibility for their educations. Students who can’t even show up ought to fail. Maybe they don’t care about failing. But if they do, that’s their incentive to show up and do the work. If this policy is implemented on a wide scale, it will result in prolonging the ill-fitting relationship between colleges and students who ought not to be in college in the first place; in the case of public and not-for profit institutions this will waste resources that could have been used to actually educate someone else, and in the case of for-profit institutions this will result in students needlessly and fruitlessly going in to debt and generating profit in exchange for no service rendered. Allowing a no-lasting-consequence “Cyber F” adds a safety net where there ought to be at least the perception of a lasting impact for one’s missteps, so as to discourage said missteps from being made in the first place.
Your position on the Cyber F phenomenon was mine when I was teaching. I found those students a giant nuisance and thought we should cycle them out of the system as quickly as possible.
I do think, though, that there’s a difference between actually failing a class the hard way and simply not showing up for the class because you’re lazy, an idiot, or unable to get your life together (not mutually exclusive categories). For first-semester community college students, it may well be worth giving them an academic mulligan, some counseling, and a chance to fix their record.
For that matter, I’ve known perfectly bright 19- and 20-year-olds who suffer what for them is a life-altering event (like a horrible breakup with their boyfriend or girlfriend) and suffer a meltdown that crushes a semester. I’m not sure that should permanently kill their ability to get into a graduate or professional school down the road.
On the other hand, we don’t want to give them half a dozen second chances with no consequence. So some sort of administrative notation on their transcript — the equivalent of a Withdrawn Failing grade, perhaps — will allow us to both track these things and not make one bad semester a career ender.
Who’s kidding who? Any resemblance between the community colleges (in which most students get stuck on remedial courses) and the for-profits (both bricks & mortar and on-line) on the one hand, and the traditional 4-year colleges with competitive admissions is an illusion to those who haven’t been paying attention to the facts. Unfortunately, the differences are largely correlated with socioeconomic status which, in turn, is correlated with minority status. But, trying to use these phony “universities” as affirmative action catalysts will only highlight and broaden the socioeconomic class gap. Uneducated graduates of the phony universities are no better prepared to meaningfully participate in the democratic process than before they attended. Of course, most of our politicians won’t do anything about the problem because they don’t want to alienate large groups of voters who delusionally believe that they can improve their standing in society by using Stafford Loans and Pell Grants to get education, degrees, and better jobs. In most cases, all they get is bad credit due to loan defaults, resumes that are red flags to the best employers, and little-if-any educational enrichment.
I’ll side note:
Some people have a requirement to formally take a class, when they have no practical use out of that class. Not because they’re not going to need the knowledge, but when they already have it, or find the mechanism of the class to be a bad way to absorb that particular knowledge.
If you need to take Business Calculus to get an online MBA out of the way, and the college doesn’t accept transfer credits, and you’ve already taken Calcs I and II, you’re going to be bored out of your mind taking Calc Lite.
So while I’m sympathetic to the teacher’s viewpoint, I can see someone checking into a class, turning in their assignments and doing fine on their exams, but otherwise maintaining a non-presence. Provided they’re absorbing the material, this should be okay with everyone involved.
Exceptions noted for seminar-type classes where participation ought to be part of the pedagogical model.
My own view is that an instructor should say very clearly in the syllabus if (and how much) attendance is required. In classes I have taught, I have tried to make it very clear what I expect in terms of attendance so that there are no surprises to anyone who actually reads the syllabus.
Now, whether attendance should be a requirement is another question.
Well, if participation is a major deliverable, then of course attendance should be mandatory as I can’t evaluate a student if they’re not there participating in group discussions and whatnot. This is a pedagogical model I like quite a bit, but it also doesn’t translate well to online instruction anyway.