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Opinion: Classes Should Track Participation, Not Attendance

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Classes should track participation not attendance | opinion: classes should track participation, not attendance | edupulse magazine
Classes should track participation not attendance | Opinion: Classes Should Track Participation, Not Attendance | EduPulse Magazine

Giving marks just for showing up set’s students for failure. Teaching students to expect marks just for showing up positions them low and puts them at a disadvantage when they enter the workforce. Participation is a more reasonable metric.

Every student should go to class. While that might be a controversial statement, one must admit attendance is in a student’s best interest if they want to achieve. However, teachers or lecturers should not give grades for going to class.

Students should not be graded for appearance but participation. Both require students to come to class, but there is an important distinction. In other words, attendance or appearance means “this student gets x marks because they’re here,” and participation is saying “this student gets x marks because they are here and actively engaged.”

Participation can be considered to be any number of ways, asking questions, in-class discussion or quizzes while attendance has only one way: presence. And while students may be required to be in class physically, just being assessed on participation means that students are not required to be in class mentally.

The main issue with receiving a grade for attendance is that students are getting points – which at university is indicative of working on or having knowledge of the coursework – for mostly doing nothing, the bare minimum.

The benefit of giving marks for participation is that it allows students to join with the program in a way that is measured. In some cases, participation can even cause discussion and learning, which wouldn’t occur with simple attendance.

On the other hand, this does not mean to say that taking attendance is not useful. It sure works well for record-keeping. Some schools do have policies necessitating teachers to take attendance or mark a register.

We can agree that there should be a shift from concentrating on a students’ attendance to students’ engagement, effort and participation.

Sometimes a teacher struggles to find a way to make their class participatory or have some form of engaging students; the teacher should reevaluate and research the way they teach.

Universities exist to develop us for joining the workforce, where “attendance” at a job is not just asked for, but mandatory. To give students the expectation of earning something for doing the bare minimum is not only unrealistic but damaging.

Tinashe (Nash) is editor-in-chief and publisher of Edu Pulse Magazine. He brings 8+ years of experience as a journalist, creative writer and digital editor.

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