Last April, I was a month out from the end of the spring semester when I read in The Chronicle about the “stunning’ level of student disconnection.” At the time, I was teaching three in-person courses, two of them large, and speaking to a lot of empty seats. The story confirmed what I already knew in a vividly depressing way: Students were checked out.
In fact, judging by class attendance, they were even more checked out last spring than they’d been in the fall. I started to wonder: What would my students say about why they were skipping class? And what could we as faculty members do to re-engage them?
So I put together an online survey of 10 mostly open-ended questions and offered the link to 245 students in two of my courses. I’d hoped 50 would respond, but 175 did. And they wrote a lot. The 73-percent response rate to an online survey that required written answers told me that my students did care about school — even if they were not showing up — and they wanted to be heard.
Now, as a new semester gets underway and we think about how to keep students enrolled and engaged, it seems a good time to share some of the findings. I used the survey to ask why students skipped classes generally, not just why they missed my class. About 37 percent of the respondents said they regularly did not attend class. Among their reasons:
- being physically sick
- dealing with depression
- family issues
- tired from their job
- finding it hard to adapt to in-person classes, post-Covid
- boring teachers
- classes too early in the morning
- attendance was not required
My survey also asked students why they regularly attended class, and their answers provided me with the following takeaways:
A required-attendance policy helps students get to class (although they don’t like to admit it). Some students said there were days when they just couldn’t get themselves to class, no matter what. (And many weren’t sure why.) Others said they never skipped class because they liked it and were supposed to be there. Still, fully a third of respondents said they went to class when they got credit for attending.
That played out in my own courses last year. A larger percentage of students came to my big freshman class where I took attendance than to my more-advanced course where I did not.
Survey respondents said that the best attendance policies provided freebies. As one freshman wrote: “I found that the classes that took attendance and offered me a few free skips caused me to actually attend class more regularly because I liked the idea of being able to miss a few times and still get 100 percent attendance.”
That is the type of attendance policy I use in my “Media and Society” course, which enrolls between 150 and 400 students, most of them in their first year of college. Attendance counts for about 15 percent of their grade, and students get four free misses, or two weeks’ worth for a course that meets twice a week.
To take attendance, I use the free version of iClicker, which allows students to log their presence on their phones or laptops, and I geolocate the class so students can’t log in from their beds. It is not foolproof; enterprising students always find ways to game the system. Likewise, in every class session, 10 to 20 students will not be able to log in, which means I must record their attendance manually. But that only takes a few minutes. And over all, it’s a handy system, particularly in large courses.
Taking attendance is an especially good idea for first-year students who are fresh out of high school and accustomed to accountability. It also makes sense in terms of student cognitive development, said Lisa Wolf-Wendel, a professor and associate dean of education at the University of Kansas. Research shows, she said, that 17- and 18-year-olds are in a right/wrong, black/white stage of brain development. For this age group, she said in an interview, rewarding attendance can work well: “If there’s a clear message that ‘if you do this, then you will get this’ — they will do it.”
In short, Wolf-Wendel said, if we as instructors want to model certain behaviors, then we should make those behaviors count — in the case of attendance, by providing points.
How they feel about you and fellow students affects attendance. Students are more likely to come to class if they feel a sense of belonging and connection — not just to you as their instructor but also to their classmates.
I learned from my survey that the possibility of making new friends inspires some students to come to class. During remote learning, they couldn’t make friends in a physical classroom. The return of in-person teaching last year restored that opportunity. This was a factor I hadn’t considered until I read a survey response from a student who said more students would attend class if the professor designed a course to be “more interactive with other students so that each student feels like they have friends in the class. I know I am much less likely to attend class if I do not have a friend in it.”
This fall, on the first day of class, I asked the 435 students in my “Media and Society” course to introduce themselves to someone sitting next to them. I put up a slide with a list of questions: not just basic information such as name, hometown, and major but also — relevant to a media course — their favorite song, movie, or TV show. As soon as the slide went up, the class erupted in conversation, before I even had a chance to explain what they were supposed to do. The idea, as I eventually explained, was to find someone in the class who could be a study buddy or who could share notes when they missed class.
Some other ideas to help your students make connections:
- Devote some class periods to peer-critique sessions. This can work even in very large courses. I use these sessions in my basic visual communication course, with up to 100 students. First I explain what to look for in the assignment, and then I ask them to share-and-compare with two or three other students. I check in with the groups during class.
- Pose an open-ended question and have students discuss it in small groups. Ask for volunteers to share their group’s perspective.
Survey respondents also said they were more likely to attend class when they feel a connection to you, the professor. Creating a sense of connection is challenging, especially in large courses. The trick is to bring yourself — and not just your material — to class.
I am a performer who is comfortable in front of any size audience. I’m naturally goofy — sometimes I sing in class or speak in Shakespearean language. That strategy obviously isn’t for everyone. So find what works for you, to make yourself more approachable.
Also, I share my experiences and views in my lectures. The result: After class, students want to talk with me, to share their experiences and opinions and to ask important questions. This openness also makes them more likely to come to my office hours. I know a lot of professors who are profoundly uncomfortable letting students know them, but a little can go a long way to making you seem less intimidating.
Two other ideas that have worked for me:
- Write a syllabus in a conversational style that expresses your personality and not just your policies. Acknowledge the challenges students face.
- Write conversational weekly announcements to students on your course website, with a to-do list for the week.
Dial back on the amount of course materials you provide online. During the pandemic, we recorded lectures, uploaded course materials, provided loads of examples of excellent student work — and made all of it easily accessible on the course website. We even put quizzes and tests online. It was a lot of work, and you may not want to let it all go. Those online quizzes and tests are convenient.
But my survey respondents said that having access to everything online means they don’t have to come to class:
- “Since a large portion of work can be completed online, I don’t feel the desire to go into class, especially when they are in the morning.”
- “I have a roommate who oftentimes does not go to classes because the lectures are recorded and posted on Canvas. So why would she go if she can lie in bed and watch them?”
- “I would often skip if I knew the material covered would be accessible to review. Additionally, if I knew there wouldn’t be an in-class quiz, or if I had other work I needed to complete for an upcoming class.”
Another student suggested that flipping classes — putting lectures online and having in-class activities — gives students a reason not to attend: Why show up if most of the grade is based on tests and quizzes and the materials needed to take those tests and quizzes are online?
A colleague and I who teach sections of the same course in visual communication have seen this happen. We use class sessions to lecture, to explain the course’s four projects, and to hold peer-critique sessions. But we also have detailed project instructions, rubrics, examples, and additional lectures on our Canvas site. Students who attended class tended to do better on the four projects, but our classes were half empty most of the time because we had given students enough online to convince them they didn’t need to attend.
Help students see that attending class can be a path to better mental health. One of the questions I asked on the survey was how attending versus skipping class affected their mental health. The obvious answer seemed to be that attending class would make them feel better — I’ve found in my own life that doing what needs to be done helps steady my boat when it threatens to capsize. But I wanted to know if I was right. And I was. Only 15 students out of 178 said that skipping class improved their well-being and gave them a chance to rest and reset. However, the vast majority wrote some version of this:
- “Attending class made me feel more productive overall. If I did miss due to excessive homework or illness I felt really bad and was discouraged.”
- “Going to class forced me into social interactions so it was good for my mental health.”
- “I think even though my mental health was bad, not attending classes also made it worse.”
- “I didn’t attend my classes in high school. Sometimes, I would skip a few classes in a row. In college, I discovered that attending class gives me a sense of achievement. It also makes me feel that I’m aware of what I’m required to do for my class.”
These survey results showed me that students — much like their instructors — are in transition from pandemic isolation to a time of more freedom. And the change is not like flipping a switch. It’s more like coming out of a dark cave into sunlight; it takes a while for your eyes to adjust.
By restoring guardrails — like taking attendance, making in-person class time essential to student success, finding ways to encourage social connections in class — you can help students adapt, and maybe help yourself, too.
