My post refers today to L’absentisme a les aules universitàries de la UAB: per què val la pena anar a classe [Absenteeism in UAB’s university classrooms: why attending classes is worthwhile], a report coordinated by José Luis Muñoz Moreno and Edelmira Badillo Jiménez, and authored by Patricia Olmos Rueda and Dolors Márquez Cebrián. You can download it here. This is the first report in a new series offered by UAB’s Institut de Ciències de l’Educació and promoted by the Vice-rector of Teacher Training and Teaching Innovation, Muñoz Moreno himself. I’ve gone through its 160 pages and can attest that this is a very solid report, which maps very proficiently the current situation and that attempts to answer with a rigorous spirit the question we are all asking: why do university students who are perfectly free to attend class choose to stay away?
Although I agree with the report’s detailed survey of the situation, there are a few issues I wish to raise regarding the conclusions. To do so, I’ll begin with an examination of the students’ replies to the question of what seems to be the problem with attendance. I believe that the report, as is typical of UAB, pays too close attention to what students demand and too little to what we, the teachers, should demand from them. I also miss a comparison with past situations, when far worse pedagogies were no obstacle for attendance. My own experience this semester, when I have introduced a series of changes to improve class attendance, is that there is not really much more that we, the teachers, can do to offer more attractive teaching if students are not willing to collaborate and if we don’t take into account external causes which are impacting the university.
To understand where we stand, the report observes that 23% of students attends less than 60% of the classes, and that in total absenteeism amounts to 44%. Take my current subject as an example, the fourth-year BA elective ‘English Prose: Autobiography and Memoir’. Of the 42 students following the subject (44 are registered but 2 have never attended any class), daily attendance runs from 21 to 25 students, with a core of about 12-15 who attend very regularly. Committed students email me to justify their absences (due to causes related to work, health, family, transport), the others just say nothing. When I’ve contacted them directly, some have never replied, others have given me diverse excuses (like being uncomfortable interacting with their peers). A percentage of the final mark in my subject (20%) is connected to class attendance because I use 30 minutes every session for classroom practice (30% is awarded for attendance, 70% for the interaction with peers). I ask students to sign the attendance list, and they do know that attendance is very important for me.
Table 25 of the report (119-120) offers an overview of what would motivate students to attend classes. Here’s a summary of what they want:
*Clear, well-structured explanations offered in a reasonable tempo that helps take notes, so that study time is reduced; for them, attendance should reduce students’ efforts, not duplicate them
*The class should offer what cannot be found on Virtual Campus or the class notes that often circulate from one year to the next, and clear clues about what to study independently
*Teachers are a key factor: they are expected to be enthusiastic, show passion for the subject, speak fluently, and be respectful, flexible and understanding with students
*The classes must be dynamic, not based on reading from PowerPoint, combine theory with practice and be participative (but without making participation compulsory). They must be closely connected to assessment, but attendance and participation must have a limited weight. The sessions must be connected to future professional practice; all subjects must be perceived to be useful
*Schedules must be compact, so that students don’t waste time attending isolated classes; very early and very late hours should be avoided; coordination must be improved to avoid overlapping. There should be more flexibility as regards attendance, with permanent access to materials including recorded classes; teacher should accept independent learning
*Commuting should be limited to a reasonable length of time and public transport should be improved
*Material conditions should also be improved: classrooms are uncomfortable, Wi-Fi needs to work better, the campus needs to be more welcoming; cafeteria prices should be cheaper
*Students’ workload should be limited to cause less stress. Students should be respected, with no threats or humiliations, or compulsory participation; they wish to feel welcome in the classroom
*The sense of community with other students and with the university should be improved
*Groups should be smaller so that students are recognized by teachers and can receive more individual attention.
Here’s what I have to say:
*being a good teacher is much, much harder than students assume and teachers tend to perform poorly when they notice students are bored or disinterested; absences do feel like negative judgement and do not lead to improved teaching
*many of us are introducing classroom activities to make the classes more dynamic and content which is not fully available on Virtual Campus, but still many students stay away
*students want us to be flexible regarding attendance but also to avoid lectures without student participation, but this is contradictory: if we design more active classes, then students must be in class and participate. Independent learning must happen apart from classroom learning, not instead of it
*UAB has always been in the same place and commuting time used to be much longer before 1994, when UAB finally had its own train station (now we have two). Mobility, then, cannot be a reason for not attending, though I agree that bad scheduling is. Teachers are also very reluctant to be at UAB for short activities.
*material conditions in the classroom have improved, but climate change has increased the heat very palpably. We have, however, installed air conditioning or fans. The furniture, I agree, could be much better. Students must note that the campus looks now much greener than in the past. And, yes, the cafeteria prices are a scandal, but we have microwaves for public use
*students want to work less, but so do teachers – academic life is very stressful for us, too; we also want to be respected, and not be insulted or humiliated in students’ surveys
*the sense of community with other students and with the university is the students’ doing; the university is constantly organizing activities but socializing is the students’ responsibility, not the institution’s
*it’s not true that knowing who your students are by personal name improves attendance, though I would agree it’s very important for assessment
The report concludes that we need to make classes more attractive, and I have no doubt that in some cases this would help. However, there is an elephant in the room that nobody is naming: boredom. I first wrote about boredom in this blog back in 2014, and I raised the issue again in a previous post of 2023 on students’ absenteeism. The new report mentions a teacher’s opinion noting that “there’s very little capacity for concentration, there is a presential absenteeism,” so that students physically present in class are disconnected, checking who knows what on their laptops. Martín-Criado and Alonso-Carmona (2024), the reports informs, identified three types of absent students: the practical, the intellectual and that who passes easily, stressing they all are products of boredom, caused by three factors: “the relationship of contents with students’ interests, the way the contents are structured, and how they are transmitted” (47). Blame the teacher, of course!
The same authors explain that students have become very good at calculating how much effort they need to make to pass a subject, and this is also a key factor in absenteeism. In my current subject, you can still pass if you never attend class and sacrifice 20% of your mark, which makes it possible for the less interested students to skip class. I’ve tried to connect attendance to obtaining a pass but UAB is very reluctant to making attendance compulsory and has opened, besides, Pandora’s box with single assessment, which allows certain students to pass a subject without ever attending classes. That’s a very serious mistake. One thing is accommodating the needs of working or ill students, another downplaying the value of classes.
A few years ago, as I narrated in this blog, I had a very deep professional crisis because I believed that the low attendance in my subjects connected with my poor performance as a teacher. Eventually, a student explained to me that it was nothing personal, and little by little I’ve got used to the idea that absenteeism is a widespread, international problem. What the universities don’t seem to understand is that students have changed (most likely due to the impact of social networks): the worst of them have low attention spans and a very low boredom threshold, feel no interest in academic life (from learning to socializing) and are always calculating how to do as little as possible. There have always been students like that, the ones who spent their whole time at the cafeteria, but the difference is that the students of past times were far less entitled: they (we!) put up with appalling teachers and did our best. The joke is that the bad teachers of today, the ones who don’t care about their students, are having a much easier time than those of us who care. I do care very much and this is why any absence is so hurtful. We are constantly tense in class, worrying that we’re not offering interesting enough teaching and doing poorly because of that tension.
Alternatively, perhaps we should not care so much about the students who never attend class or only irregularly to focus on those who do come to class, and who seem to be forgotten in all this concern about absenteeism. We need to ask them why they come to class. What irks me most, to be frank, is that absentee students (and I mean those who could attend but choose not to) still expect us to employ all our energies in assessing them. This is unfair. They should understand that a student who shows total disrespect for the teacher’s work by not attending classes (this is how it feels) can hardly be seen with as much sympathy as one who makes the effort to attend every day, being always punctual and ready to participate.
In The Professor (2018), Johnny Depp plays an English Literature teacher with an attitude. The first day of class, he announces that he’ll give a pass to any students who have registered but will accept never coming to class or bothering him with assessment. About half the class leaves, amused and enchanted. The rest stay for a true learning experience, which is also satisfactory for the teacher. In practice, many students take this easy way out; the only problem is that we still need to mark their work. Do they learn more than the students in that film who are given an automatic pass? My view is that you have to be a very, very good student to learn independently, without attending classes. What the students who skip classes don’t seem to understand is that, even when the teacher is not that good, class time gives you a chance to think about the subject and improve your performance. But, again, I insist, if students treat the university as a just a way of obtaining a degree and lack interest and curiosity, there is nothing even the best teacher can do for them.
I’ll finish my post thanking the students who attend my classes regularly for collaborating with me: they make want to be a better teacher. It’s a pleasure to interact every day with you, and to learn with and from you. I understand that some students have no option but to miss classes, and they have all my support, but I will never understand the students who, having the chance to attend classes with no obstacles, stay away without ever explaining why. Don’t you see how little sense this makes?
By the way, the report never really says why attending classes is worthwhile (and nor have I!)… we need to ask, then, the students who attend regularly.