Attendance and Learning

 In every Higher Education institution, it is a common practice to calculate the attendance of students and publish it so that students make it up to attain a certain percentage of attendance. Institutions have a clear policy to permit students with 75% attendance to write their exams.  Despite the policy, each time during exams it is common that faculty are in a dilemma whether to permit students if the student falls short of attendance.    Every year there are several defaulters.  However, every student has a reason for absence, and sometimes it is very difficult to be sure about the genuineness.  It has become a ritual in every class be it school, PUC, PG, or Ph.D. to monitor the students for their attendance.  I have a doubt if faculty have to monitor or students have to monitor the attendance themselves.   Students have to attend the classes on their own accord.  Is attendance not curbing the learning interests of students?  If attendance is mandated does that not make students attend with the sole aim of securing a said percentage of attendance? Does it not take away the intrinsic motivation of learning from a class? 

The mandatory attendance has made our students come to classes for attendance purposes and not for what they get out of a class. The only time students learn is when they are in the class.  But when we talk to some students, we realize that attending class for them is perceived as a burden. Teaching has become so monotonous and rarely triggers thinking.  Students fail to develop an interest in the class thereby becoming passive listeners.

The education system believes that the attendance mandate brings students success in exams.  These further drive us to the question of what is success and how we realistically assess students?  Should we be exam centric and give greater importance to the marks they score in the exam. Discipline is one factor that the faculty think could be achieved through attendance.  Here the question is whether our intention is discipline or learning?

Why can’t we have a zero-attendance policy and make students feel more responsible and inspired to attend classes?  Can we ensure greater accountability for the students? This would be possible only with a very effective mentoring system. One-on-one tracking, maintaining close connections with the students, use of experiential methods of teaching, student engagement and continuous assessments, and many more attitudinal and cultural changes at the institution level.  An open culture of learning is the need of the hour rather than the rigid structural impositions in the learning environment.