Absences sometimes make instructors ponder

By Gayle Golden

By this time in the semester, rosters have stabilized. You're learning student names. Assignments are building one skill to the next.

If only every student would show up to every class according to plan.

But that's just not how life, or college, goes. Students miss classes. Instructors have to figure out a way to deal with that. Every year, the policy surrounding a student's ability to complete make up work for such absences receives the most queries of any university policy involving teaching and learning.

That makes sense. Students who have to miss class for legitimate reasons, such as illnesses or funerals, worry about the impact on their grade if an instructor won't allow them to make up what they miss. Instructors, meanwhile, sometimes feel confused about how to keep students accountable yet stay sensitive -- all without adding boatloads of extra work to keep track of who has missed what when.

To spread some light, and less heat, I asked a few HSJMC faculty how they handle absences in their classes. The good news is that we all have a few choices, so you can pick whatever suits your style and your course. The important thing is to let students know you are watching.


Build attendance into the coursework
Missing class in Hubbard Senior Fellow Scott Libin's Jour 1001 comes with a price over time: He assigns in-class exercises nearly every session that end up equaling 20 percent of the semester grade. Students with excused absences have one week to make up those exercises. In his smaller broadcast classes, he simply notes when students arrive late, leave early or miss class entirely without offering an excuse -- all of which cost participation points that account for 10 percent of the semester grade.

"I make my attendance practices explicitly clear on the first day of class, as well as in the syllabus and on Moodle," he says. "I try to make private contact with students whose attendance is on the verge of causing serious damage to their grades or whose absences seem out of character or otherwise worrisome. Beyond that, I put the responsibility on individual students to catch up on what they miss."

Signing in for accountability
Lecturer Mark Jenson assumes the students in his ad strategy and account planning classes are ready to step up into the professional world. So he simply has them sign into class as if they were logging into a meeting.

"My philosophy is that they are now adults and they can take responsibility for showing up to class," Jenson says. "Missing class will hurt their grade if they do not do the required work." If a student's grade suffers, he can pull out the class log sheets and show how missing class may have factored. That's a real-world lesson that can pack more a punch than docked points.

Betsy Neibergall Anderson, assistant professor, has also asked students in her Jour 4243 Digital Content for Brand Communications and Jour 3279w Professional Writing for Strategic Communications classes to sign in, which works for her as long as the instructor monitors the sheet, she says.

"One semester I did have students signing in for each other, so I warn them about that, and now try to look over the signed list to make sure it's accurate before the end of class." She has also experimented with phone apps for attendance.

Notably, Canvas has a tool called Rollcall, which can also work attendance into your grade sheet. (Something to look forward to when you transition!)

Two birds with one stone
Assistant Professor Sid Bedingfield uses 17 in-class exercises distributed through the semester, similar to Libin's strategy, in his large Jour 1001 course to build in attendance. "The system is not perfect. But on average, it does penalize those who miss class frequently," he says. It's important that any grading system using such exercises for attendance allow ample points for the other, more meaningful assignments such as exams and short research papers, he says. For example, the 140 points for the in-class exercises are part of 800 total points for the entire course.

But in smaller classes, Bedingfield has experimented with a technique that brings multitasking to the absence patrol. He asks students to propose an exam question based on the day's reading. "This method provides an attendance check each day," he says, "and the quality of the proposed exam question give me some indication of how closely the student engaged with the reading."

Bedingfield uses those exam-question attendance tallies to deliver consequences to students who fail to show up: those who miss class more than three times without a good excuse lose five points from their final point total in the class, which drops them half a letter grade. Meanwhile, the students who show up are turning into earnest contributors to the learning environment.

"So far, I have been pleased with the quality of the proposed exam questions," he says. "I plan to adapt several of them for use on the actual exams." 
 
Be realistic about student motives
Associate Professor Giovanna Dell'Orto uses two forms of attendance in her Jour 3614 History of Media Communication class: quizzes and a sign-in sheet for attendance when students are giving presentations.


Her best advice to those trying to figure out a way to hold students accountable? Make sure something, anything, matters in the long run for student grades. "I know from experience that students are smart at profit-cost calculations, and most will skip classes if they know there are no consequences whatsoever," she says.



Know what's legitimate
While we're on the subject of attendance, it's a good idea to review the FACTS about the absence policy itself.  Formally called the Makeup Work for Legitimate Absences policy, it lists the kinds of absences for which instructors may not penalize students. In other words, instructors must allow students to make up the missed classwork if a students absence is because of:

• illness, physical or mental, of the student or a student’s dependent;
• medical conditions related to pregnancy;
• participation in intercollegiate athletic events;
• subpoenas;
• jury duty;
• military service;
• bereavement, including travel related to bereavement;
• religious observances;
• participation in formal University system governance, including the University Senate, Student Senate, and Board of Regents meetings, by students selected as representatives to those bodies; and
• activities sponsored by the University if identified by the senior academic officer for the campus or the officer’s designee as the basis for excused absences.

Voting is not an unavoidable or legitimate absence, although instructors are expected to accommodate students who want to participate in party caucuses. And for circumstances not listed above, the instructor has the primary responsibility to decide on a case-by-case basis if the absence is legitimate and to grant a request for makeup work.

In other words, it's your choice.

That's important to remember. Instructors are still in the driver's seat when it comes to how to handle many absences, although it's important to know the policy and be sensitive to students who have legitimate concerns. You can usually spot the difference pretty easily. Students who miss class for reasons not listed as legitimate will have to live with the consequences, and usually understand that.

What's up with the single-episode medical absence?
Instructors have a right to request verification for absences, including the ones listed above, to determine if they are indeed legitimate. For example, you have the right to request documentation for to prove that the week-long trip to Miami was indeed for a grandmother's funeral. As difficult as that request may be, most students can easily provide an obituary or some other evidence that the absence was based on a real event.

But one circumstance, students do not need to provide documentation. Last year, the university added a provision to the policy allowing students to request makeup work for a "single-episode medical absence" without providing any documentation. This threw many instructors into a panic: An absence with no verification? Yikes!

The policy change arose because students were flooding Boynton Health clinic for flu or cold symptoms that were often best treated at home. Fear not, though. The policy doesn't leave instructors helplessly watching as scores of students claim seemingly endless single-episode medical absences without notes while demanding makeup work week after week. (What a nightmare!)

If you actually read the policy, you'll see that the instructor does have the right to ask for verification if the student has more than one single-episode medical absence OR if that single-episode medical absence involves missing a lab session, an exam or an important graded assignment. So really, the effect is quite limited. Instructors are still in charge.

And in ALL cases, remember the student needs to inform the instructor of the reason for any absence as soon as possible and to make arrangements to catch up with missed work as soon as the student is able.

Too many absences?
It's possible that a student misses so much coursework that passing the course is, well, not possible.

The policy states that sad reality and backs an instructor's right to determine when that is the case. The best strategy is to let the students know how absences are impacting their status in the course as soon as its becoming an issue. Again, the instructor is in charge. As long as the instructor has communicated clearly with the student every step of the way, it's the student's responsibility to follow through and accept the consequences.

We'd all like students to show up and never face a glitch. But sometimes life doesn't work that way. What we can do is communicate clearly, set the consequences and then show up with compassion and a clear explanation about the cost of missing out.

If you have a question or a comment for ProActive Teaching, please post one below or email me at ggolden@umn.edu. I'll be back at you soon.