A number of studies show the benefits to institutions of Higher Education in monitoring student attendance. First of all, this is due to the close connection between regular attendance and students’ academic performance. Additionally, because it can be a tool for early warning for potential dropouts.
The information that can be gathered using attendance taking is now a key focus of academic departments, which can be used to identify the range of variables that contribute to unenrolling from the university, thus helping create strategies and support programs to help students complete their studies.
Read on for more details.
Of the 1,200,000 students in Higher Education in Chile, on average 30% abandon their studies, 28.7% drop out in the first year. The Latin American context is even more notable. “On average, only half of the enrolled students between the ages of 25 and 29 have completed their studies, either because they’ve dropped out or they are still studying. Half of the dropouts take place during the first year of study,” (World Bank, 2017).
More and more institutions of Higher Education are making efforts to improve their retention rates. This includes conducting research and analyses regarding the issue via directed studies, the majority of which conclude that their are multiple factors at play. They can be social, personal, familial or institutional and include problems such as financial hardship, a lack of preparation or key skills for a successful university pursuit, little degree program selection security, inflexible curricula, a lack of closeness between the student and the institution, difficulties with social integration at the university, the presence of psychological difficulties at the individual or family level, and other factors.
It is important to recall that academic departments within institutions of Higher Education are responsible for the quality of their programs and providing adequate resources that promote student success with knowledge acquisition in keeping with market standards. This means it is necessary to monitor progress, assess their work and give them feedback so that they can learn on their own.
The ideal scenario is when students interact with course material and are cognitively predisposed toward learning under the conditions offered by the program. This makes them more likely to retain information since they are not only familiar with it, but it also fulfills an aspect of key curricular design set up for this purpose. In short, students that are not present miss out on opportunities for success.
Today’s technology helps identify deficiencies in this process with technological solutions that not only monitor attendance, but also provide relevant information on the contents covered in each class. This means a real advantage is gained by institutions that have such information on hand when creating specific support programs for addressing the real problems that students have.
Student success in the education system has impacts beyond the Higher Education institution. As each professional person enters the labor market having first had a quality education, it will affect the local and national communities as well. Retention efforts not only impact student success, but carry over to positively affect the larger society.
Higher Education Alerts
The report Improving Retention, Completion and Success in Higher Education of the Australian Higher Education Standards Panel published in 2018 points out that student attendance is the primary factor influencing dropout rates.
Panel studies show that the factors that increase dropout rates include “the learning environment, the professors’ teaching ability, a lack of student participation, a high student-staff ratio, insufficient assistance for students and personal factors like financial, emotional, or health matters, or other life events that affect university students.”
The panel experts state that the methods used by universities to retain students are of interest to the entire higher education community. “Innovation in higher education and leaving the path of traditional higher education in order to satisfy the current and future needs of the job market must be kept in mind during today’s discussions around burnout,” states the report.
The American College Testing (ACT) agency published a report in 2016 that goes into depth on student retention at universites in the United States, showing that nearly one third of them will drop out.
The Australian and American contexts are nothing more than a reflection of the shared challenge facing institutions of Higher Education globally. They need to implement tools for detecting every angle pertient to students potentially abandoning the education system.
Follow-up is the first step
An article of the Higher Education Academy, explains how implementing a disciplinary culture and certain preventive measures can make all the difference when it comes to student success. It is about creating a connection of commitment between the student and the institution.
Education Developer at the University of Plymouth, Dr. Lynne Wyness offers five key lessons on student retention:
Attendance regulation provides key information on student behavior. Monitoring it can help determine what the variables are in terms of why students at a given institution choose to stop attending.
While standardized intervention programs can be built for the detected cases, only experience will help uncover a timely solution for each situation.
A student’s commitment to the institution grows stronger every day due to relationships with instructors. It is extremely important to employ professionals committed to student learning.
Be they financial, family or scheduling problems, early intervention can always make a difference.
Conclusion
Today, student success in general and student retention in general along with early warnings are now key factors for higher education institutions due to the individual impact it has on students and the resultant social benefit.
Attendance monitoring is a key basic support measure for the whole chain of interactions that a student has with the institution of higher education. This means it is very important to create specific follow-up procedures in order to gather relevant information in order to enable conscious decision-making and impact institutions.
Today there are specific tech solutions to help institutions not only gather key data on attendance and contents, it also aids in providing early alert notices. All of this has led to essential progress being made around these factors in the university context.