What goes on inside the classroom can often be a mystery for administrators at many institutions of Higher Education. It seems that once the door closes, only the professor and students know how the subjects were addressed or if in fact the number of people whose names are jotted down on a hand-written list is correct.
Classroom management appears to be a rudimentary task of little value for conducting a professional degree program, but is actually essential for any educational body. Various studies show that attendance is strictly related to student retention, and therefore, student success.
We explain below how monitoring attendance and grades or marks can make a noticeable difference.
There are key questions that all academic administrative departments must address:
- How many students attended class?
- What subjects were taught?
- Did the students understand the contents?
These questions turn into mysteries once the classroom doors close. Only a small amount of it is contained in documentation that arrives late on a piece of paper that could have been adulterated by a student marking an absent friend as present.
Class attendance affects how the contents are understood and incorporated, thus affecting the general academic success of an institution. An article from Minnesota State University shows this by presenting a number of studies on the matter.
The first of the studies presented by the article measured the impact of the students’ time commitment to each aspect involved in learning, one of them being class time. The study showed that by far the most valuable and important time commitment in a course is classroom time wherein the student is not only present, but also cognitively participating in the class. This means that in addition to class attendance it is very important that the materials are presented in an interesting fashion.
Other reports that cite this article discuss key data about absenteeism. The results are revelatory:
- Smaller classes have less absenteeism.
- The more meaningful the mathematics component is, the less absenteeism is found.
- There was more absenteeism found among beginner courses than those at higher levels.
- The better the instructor, the less absenteeism occurs.
- Absenteeism was concentrated primarily among the few students missing a number of classes, whereas the majority of students only skipped a few.
Another study at that university surveyed students of one faculty in terms of the various aspects of the class such as the presentation method, classroom management, professional abilities, the relationships among students and teacher preparedness. It was remarkable that the survey respondents who assessed their teachers as better had fewer absences from class.
Understanding is not only a classroom task
Being present means that the student has the opportunity to process the contents and carry out dual codification, a more formative process in which distinct channels of memory interact for information retention. Attendance taking also serves to make students responsible for their own attendance commitment in terms of acquiring knowledge. An article from the Berkeley Center of Teaching & Learning offers three key pieces of advice for incentivizing student responsibility and motivation for their learning process:
1. Helping students understand the importance of attendance
Eliminating the myth of “control” of the classroom is necessary. Students must be instructed about the learning benefits acquired in the classroom and the time savings it can imply in terms of getting good grades.
2. That the teacher makes sure attending class is worth it
Contents alone do not a class make. Students have a huge number of sources for getting information online, but only a motivational class can ensure that learning is long-lasting.
3. Make sure that students are responsible for their learning
It is necessary that students are “cognitively” present in the classroom making it necessary to prove they are learning through testing and motivating them to ask questions at the end of class.
Additionally, providing tools for monitoring grades will incentivize student commitment.
As shown in the above-reviewed studies, it is not only about attendance. Once the students are present in the classroom, ensuring the correct reception of contents and monitoring grading is fundamental for the institutional objectives of Higher Education, which is the education of students.
There are diverse kinds of learning assessment tools, which means student feedback and a professor’s evaluation about performance is very important information for the administrative departments for all educational institutions. To do so, typically surveys are first given to students and professors then must do a large amount of administrative work at the end of the course.
There are new technological tools for monitoring attendance and learning that goes on in the classroom. These assessment tools can be utilized both by the professor and students and can give constant feedback about what occurs in class.
Conclusion
Studies have shown that classroom management is not merely administrative, attendance is directly connected to better academic results, and monitoring the perceptions of teachers and students helps administrative departments follow-up on the objectives set out for the course.
All of this information is key for achieving student success in Higher Education institutions.
