Final blog post
I think that the two decisions to have non-required
attendance and soft deadlines had impacts on myself and the class as a whole,
both direct and indirect. Making attendance not required is almost guaranteed
to change how certain students approach the class. For me personally, the decision
to not have required attendance allowed outside circumstances (job interviews, meetings/appointments,
etc.) to have a greater impact in my decision to attend. If attendance were
required (therefore impacting my grade in the class), I would have had to plan
these outside commitments around the 9:30-10:50 a.m. time slot. Since my
schedule is already pretty full with my on-campus job, if it was convenient for
me (and for the other party – i.e, those who were interviewing me) I would tend
not to reschedule if they selected a time that overlapped with our class. This
happened on a couple occasions, but I always made an effort to let you know beforehand.
From the class perspective, obviously not having required attendance will decrease
the motivation and drive for some students to attend regularly. Similar to me,
I would assume this rule made it easier for other people to have outside
commitments have a greater influence on their decision to attend. For example,
if someone on any given Tuesday/Thursday was not feeling well (but not
extremely sick), they would probably not feel as inclined to make an effort to
show up, knowing that the decision has no impact on their grade.
There could be some methods to combat the decline in
attendance without just strictly making attendance required. Adding incentive
seems to be the way to motivate students to attend regularly, maybe adding an
extra credit element to the policy. Some other professors have not required
attendance 100% of the time, but have allotted a certain number of “skips” that
a student could use throughout the semester without grade penalty. I have seen
professors not require attendance every day, but randomly check attendance for
a grade, leading to students attending more regularly because they don’t know
if they’re going to take attendance or not. Whatever the solution may be, rarely
are professors going to get 100% attendance. Some people are just inherently
not interested in regular attendance. So in anticipation of not having everyone
in the class, combining more online resources with a non-required attendance
policy could provide some benefit. It may not have a direct correlation with
attendance (its not impossible it could lead to further decline), but it would
give students the ability to self-learn any content they may have missed. These
are examples of methods I have seen in the past, but every class structure is
different and it depends on the inherent characteristics of the individual
students and the class as a whole.
The soft deadlines did not have as great an impact as the
attendance policy. My behavior was not changed directly from this policy, but
outside factors may have contributed to a change in my posting timelines on a
week-to-week basis. For about the first half of the semester, I was pretty consistent
getting my posts done by Friday. I preferred to have less work to do over the
weekend, so it was a mutually beneficial situation in which I lightened my
workload for later on, while adhering to the recommended deadline. Although, as
my workload for the semester increased (I am taking a second 8-week online course
that contributed to this), I tended to write my posts closer to Sunday instead
of by Friday. In some weeks I tried to complete the post by Friday or early Saturday,
but this online class I am in has modules due every Friday at 11:59pm. That class
has a hard deadline policy, so that would take the immediate priority since I
would be penalized for not completing that in time. If the soft deadline is not
the policy that was initially envisioned, marginally penalizing students for
late submissions could be an option. If the goal is to have as many students complete
their posts as early as possible, an extra credit or bonus point incentive
could serve that purpose. Overall, I think that only one of these decisions has
the chance to impact the learning potential from the group, and it is the attendance
policy. Like I mentioned above, having more online resources may reverse that issue.
The soft-deadline policy would cause some students to take their time with their
posts, but maybe that could be beneficial. I would assume the preferred choice
would be a well-written post turned in on Sunday than a rushed, poorly-written
post turned in on Friday. These are just some observations, but I don’t think
these decisions are having a strictly negative impact on my performance and the
performance of the class as a whole.
Thanks for your comments. Regarding the attendance issue - let me note the following. I did skip some classes when I was an undergrad. But I never skipped a class in my major. I can't say for sure that was the norm then, but I think it was. And at that time there was no incentives for coming to class. It merely was expected.
ReplyDeleteSo, let's imagine the hypothetical where classes on campus didn't require attendance (or have those bonus points that you mentioned). Can you speculate how you would behave in that case and whether it would be different than the situation you described in your post.
There is a related issue here about whether things of this sort are preparation for the world of work or not. Some of the students from prior years who have posts on the class site talked about habit formation in college mattering for the world of work. I can't comment about that from direct experience, but it is an argument to consider.
Then, let me try to get you to do another hypothetical. You are now a manager and somebody in your workgroup is tardy, but otherwise does the work okay. How do you handle the situation? Does your own experience this semester give you any insight into that ?
You can do the same sort of analysis with the soft deadlines. It may be different in the workplace if others can't started on what they are to do until you contribute your piece. But there is also that if you do a sloppy rush job, that might not help anybody. So you might think that through.
Especially for classes that are critical to my major, I will always make my best effort to attend every time. But to answer your first hypothetical, if every single class at the University didn't have an attendance requirement, my behavior would depend on the individual class, not the policy as a whole. I would need to judge how critical attending class is relative to performance. If materials are discussed in class, and there are not adequate (online) resources to make up for that missed discussion, then that would be a situation where I would attend every time. If I feel that I will take the most away from being in class, and this is common mostly with courses within my major/minor, I will make it a regular habit to attend. I wouldn't easily let outside commitments alter this behavior, but that also depends on how important that outside commitment is.
DeleteI actually believe that a lot of the habits developed during college will translate to the workplace. Not in all situations, but from an attendance (and certainly a deadline standpoint), these can even be more critical in the professional world. If I was a manager (your second hypothetical question) and that person is tardy, I would administer a quick reinforcement of the policy (being on time, probably) and only have a more serious discussion if that person repeats their tardiness. If they have been doing their work well and it is a one-time thing, I won't pay much attention to it, as the quality of their work and previous attendance habits would have given me a certain level of trust with that person. If it is a critical project and attendance is absolutely mandatory, more drastic measures may need to be taken.
In terms of soft deadlines, I don't think this will apply as much. A large component of the workplace is getting together and creating goals (whether individualized or as a team), and a large portion of those goals may be centered around hard deadlines. There is more of a collaborative effort in most situations, so it's hard to analyze it in the same context as a class, where the majority of the work is by individual. It's all about finding the right balance of swiftness and high quality work, but in the workplace at least you (probably) have more individuals to assist in any sort of process like this.