By Tom Lowe
In my first blog, I outlined the different areas of student engagement to consider when innovating in your context in the modern university or college. I argued that considering the emotional, cognitive, behavioural, and student voice areas of student engagement are all important for developing thriving learning environments. More recently one topic of conversation in the area of student engagement that has dominated recent debates is in-class attendance, which is understood as a proxy indicator of student engagement. There has been increasing dismay in the sector about perceived decreases in student engagement measured by in-class attendance in recent years, and the quantitative data supporting this, while not shared in public by universities, it is often debated at internal committees who are left pondering lower than expected student attendance. As previously mentioned, the common belief, supported by the literature, is that student engagement will lead to more positive student outcomes, so it is only to be expected that with ever-decreasing student attendance in class, colleagues are becomes increasingly concerned and frustrated.
How we think about attendance
Recording attendance is not a new phenomenon, with pre-18 levels of schooling having used registers for at least the last century. This is in part for student safety, but equally used to penalise parents for students not attending. If a student below the age of 18 does not attend school, parents could face inquiries and prosecution. In a post-18 education at our universities and colleges, although attendance is not a legal requirement as higher education is for adults (18 and older), international students are often under visa requirements to attend a certain percentage. In addition, certain courses have attendance requirements through their professional body’s accreditation – I think we’d all agree that we wouldn’t want a paramedic student to miss a session on a vital element of first aid!
From verbally confirmed pen and paper registers to signature sign in systems, and now scan-in technology, attendance is so often seen as the core indicator of engagement (perhaps quite fairly as classes are the main contact time) and the processes through which we capture it are becoming increasingly sophisticated to mirror this focus on recording this data. The fixation on class attendance is often intricately linked with our perceptions that attendance = student engagement = good student outcomes. However, if you cast your minds back, we can all think of a peer university who barely turned up and still got good grades, and we all have attended classes where we felt we walked away with little learning to show for it. This can problematise this seemingly straightforward assumption that attendance does necessarily equal engagement and outcomes. Perhaps this new era of student learning and digitisation presents us with opportunity to reframe this discussion on attendance and consider new ways of learning and student engagement with content. What does it mean to emotionally, cognitively and behaviourally engage with learning? Does it require presenteeism in the physical classroom? Or, can and should student engagement look different for this new generation of learners with very different needs and perceptions of the world.
Why are students not attending?
Although the considerations above highlight that the picture is more complicated than it may first appear, it does not immediately stop universities centring focus on attendance, so it is important to consider further some of the dominant reasons why students may not be attending. There has now been more contemporary research and exploration into the reasons cited by students (see sources below). First, as discussed already in this blog series, is the long-term impacts of COVID-19 pandemic, where society became socially distanced and young people in education got a taste for learning (and, importantly, passing assessments) without being in-person. Second, dominant right now in the UK, is a challenging cost of living crisis where inflation over a number of years has outpaced student finance loans, seeing many students in financial hardship having to choose paid employment over going to class. Beyond this, there are other important factors at stake, such as mental health, caring responsibilities, preference in learning style, and looking for efficiencies with personal time. Many of the above considerations are seen in other forums of bring people together in society, such as workplaces, where higher education overall reports general decreases in footfall on campuses (which includes staff attendance in-person).
Although it is easy to blame COVID-19, the cost of living crisis and other external factors, there is one further dominant barrier to student attendance that we can more readily do something about, which is the design of the course students are studying. Across the research (see below for references and readings), students have cited that the way the course is designed has impacted their decision to attend in-person. Items include an inaccessible timetable designed with the assumption of students having lots of free time; conflicting deadlines from individual modules/units, where deadlines compete for students’ attention; classes not worthy turning up for, where there is a perception that the class does not count towards the assignment; online materials supporting the knowledge transfer which compensate for in-person sessions; or the individual teacher preferences being seen as highly relevant or not. These reasons are all impacting decision making for students which we can explore.
There will be different reasons for each situation of low student attendance, but what is important is to talk about it together as colleagues and with your students. If your students have chosen an in-person education model, it is likely that they have chosen it because they wanted to study in-person, but if it is not happening, it is important to investigate the reasons why. There may be fixable programme planning solutions to address, or desperate financial issues in the student body where the university needs to put support in place. Whatever the solution or issues being experienced, engaging students’ voices in the attendance conversation is critical. The research on this topic is ongoing and developing, but in my next blog – we’ll revisit COVID-19 and ask whether student engagement will ever go back to normal.
About the author:
Tom Lowe has researched and innovated in student engagement across diverse settings for over ten years, in areas such as student voice, retention, employability and student-staff partnership. Tom works at the University of Westminster as Assistant Head of School (Student Experience) in Finance and Accounting where he leads on student experience, outcomes and belonging. Tom is also the Chair of RAISE, a network for all stakeholders in higher education for researching, innovating and sharing best practice in student engagement. Prior to Westminster, Tom was a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education at the University of Portsmouth, and previously held leadership positions for engagement and employability at the University of Winchester. Tom has published two books on student engagement with Routledge; ‘A Handbook for Student Engagement in Higher Education: Theory into Practice’ in 2020 and ‘Advancing Student Engagement in Higher Education: Reflection, Critique and Challenge’ in 2023, and has supported over 40 institutions in consultancy and advisory roles internationally.
Recommended further readings on attendance:
Dickinson, J., 2023. Can students be bothered to come to campus? Wonkhe 24th March 2023. Retrieved from: https://wonkhe.com/blogs/can-students-be-bothered-to-come-to-campus/
Richards, J., 2023. The influence of cost of living on student decision making. Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) 13th April 2023. Retrieved from: https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2023/04/13/the-influence-of-cost-of-living-on-student-decision-making/#respond
Resch, K., Alnahdi, G. and Schwab, S., 2023. Exploring the effects of the COVID-19 emergency remote education on students’ social and academic integration in higher education in Austria. Higher Education Research & Development, 42(1), pp.215-229.
Russell Group Students’ Union, 2023. Students facing poverty as cost of living crisis hits studies, new research shows. Retrieved from: https://russellgroup.ac.uk/news/students-facing-poverty-as-cost-of-living-crisis-hits-studies-new-research-shows/
