Including attendance in the grade

In My Humble Opinion
1

Where I teach, it is required of faculty that they cause their students’ attendance to affect the students’ course grades in some way. (It’s understood the attendance-to-grade correlation should be positive; no letting poor attendance raise the grade of course!)

Whatever misgivings one may have about this policy (and there are special circumstances concerning this school that make the policy make more sense than some of you might assume) it is the policy. I’m trying to figure out how best to implement it.

I considered simply including attendance as one grade among others, to be weighted and averaged just like an exam or a quiz. But this doesn’t affect student’s grades consistently. What I mean is, a student doing C level work who has attended every class can (assuming a certain weighting) attribute three points of her course grade to her attendance–while a student doing A level work and who has attended every class can only attribute one point of her course grade to her attendance. Basically, the worse the student’s grade would be ignoring the attendance grade, the more her attendance positively affects her grade. This doesn’t seem right. Each student’s attendance should count for the same number of course grade points, I think.

I then considered simply setting aside five course grade points for attendance. They get half a point for each class they attend. Their course grade is averaged out of 95, and then up to five points are added for attendance. But this still seems to award lower performers disproportionately for attendance–that is, if it’s valid to call the difference between (a grade calculated as a percentage ignoring attendance) and (a grade calculated out of 95 with up to 5 attendance points added on) a “reward for attendance”. For a student who makes a 100 on every assignment receives a reward of 0 for perfect attendance (and risks 5 points total for not attending), a student who makes a 70 on every assignment receives a reward of 1.66 points for perfect attendance and risks losing 3.33 for not attending, and a student who made a zero on every assignment would receive a reward of five points for attending and risk nothing for not attending.

Next up is the following system: Simply subtracting a point for each absence. (I’d probably set a max subtract of five here.) I think this is fair. No student receives a reward for attendance (meaning there’s no difference between their calculated average on assignments and their course grade assuming perfect attendance) and every student stands to lose exactly the same number of points for failing to attend. (There’s something funny about the idea that a student who can get a 100 on every assignment without ever coming to class should lose five points for it–but admittedly, such students are extremely rare, and in any case, it’s policy. The grade has to be affected by attendance.)

Another possibility is simply making it known that their attendance will be taken into account when deciding what to do about “close” grades–grades that are “almost” B’s for example, though I’m not really comfortable about this kind of thing unless I can set down formally and with precision each decision procedure I would use about such cases.

And another possibility is coming up with a way to make it such that the higher the assignment average, the less attendance affects the grade, such that someone getting all 100’s would have no effect based on attendance, and someone getting all 70’s would have a greater effect based on attendance than someone getting all 80’s. Something like: subtract 1 - A/100 points (where A = the assignment average) for each day missed up to ten days missed. This makes 0 the most you can lose if you have a 100 assignment average and 10 the most you can lose if you have a 0 assignment average. You can’t go below zero of course… This affects students disproportionately, but at least the disproportion is in the “right” direction–to the extent that students prove (via the assignment average) that they didn’t need to attend, they are penalized less for failing to attend.

Anyway, what do you guys think of all this?

2

I think you’re spending way too much time thinking about this. Far more than your students will, anyhow. :wink:

Most teachers I know go the “lose up to X points for missed attendance” route and call it a day.

3

Anecdotally, when I taught - I gave the disclaimer in the syllabus and verbally - I was not at a big school so if someone was abusing my lax behavior towards attendance I spoke to them and if they started showing up and participating I did not tag their grad. If they blew me off after repeated attempts to talk about their attendance the rubric in the syllabus stood firm.

4

I can’t make sense of your “affecting students differently” math. Let’s say you state that 5% of the grade is participation/attendance. If I get 100% on the assignments yet never come to class, I get a 95%. If I get a 94.7% on every test and come to class every day, I get a 95%. What’s the problem? How is that unfair?

I think you’re letting the math confuse you. You’re looking at the difference between the 100 and the 94.7 and wondering why they both finish with a 95%. That has nothing to do with the attendence and everything to do with the fact that you’re comparing the score of 95% of the grade with only a 5% chunk of it.

What if I had 19 small tests, each worth 5%, and a 20th 5% called “attendance” for a total of 100%. In that scenario, attendence is equal to one test grade. It doesn’t matter if a student aces 18 tests and comes to every class, or if they ace all 19 tests and never come to class. It’s the same either way.

Put another way, the whole “affects students differently” is an artifact of the relative weighting you’re putting in place, not the fact that one section is called “tests” and the other is called “attendence”.

5

I’d prefer a teacher who had thought carefully about whether this is the right way to do it and why. I’m coming around to a policy similar to the one you named–subtract a point for each missed class–but I had to do some thinking to get there. The method which “seemed alright” at first glance–include attendance as one weighted grade among others–turned out on analysis to be unfair.

6

Yeah, you’re putting too much thought into it. You don’t come to class, you lose points. Who cares if you needed them more because you’re a dumbass?

7

An incentive system that’s too complicated to understand isn’t an incentive.

So in matters like this, simplicity and clarity are usually preferable to perfect fairness.

I’d recommend something like this:

Every student gets X free absences. Every absence after X costs you Y points off your final grade, up to a maximum of Z.

Adjust X, Y and Z as appropriate.

You give them one or two free absences because shit happens, even to good students. The other numbers are set up so the pain is the greatest when they START blowing off classes. That’s to discourage them from starting down that road. And that’s why you have to have a cap. It lets you make the penalty for missing a few classes fairly harsh without forcing you to fail someone who misses every class and still does fine on his coursework.

8

Take four students, Alice Bill, Carl and Donna. Alice and Bill always get a grade of 90 on every assignment. Carl and Donna always get a grade of 60 on every assignment.

There are nine assignments, each weighted the same. Each counts for ten percent of the course grade. There is also an attendance grade, counting for ten percent of the course grade.

Alice always attends. (100 for attendance.) Bill never attends. (0 for attendance.) Carl always attends. Donna never attends.

So then, here are the grades:

Alice’s assignment average: 90
Alice’s course grade: 91
Bill’s assignment average: 90
Bill’s course grade: 81
Carl’s assignment average: 60
Carl’s course grade: 65
Donna’s assignment average: 60
Donna’s course grade: 54

From this we can see that a non attending student always gets ten points less in the course grade than an attending student with the same assignment average. That looks fair.

But we can also see that a student with a high assignment average nets fewer course points for attendance than does a student with a low assignment average. For example, Alice only nets a single point for attending class, while Carl netted five.

You’re saying that I should look at the first comparison and call the system fair. Can you say something about why I should ignore the second comparison?

I can see that you might make this counter-argument. Pretend it’s not an “attendance” grade but just another quiz. Alice and Carl both perform equally well on this quiz, both getting a 100. So now Alice’s average goes from 90 to 91, while Carl’s goes from 60 to 65. By my logic about the attendance grade, it looks like in this case, for the same performance (the same quiz grade), the two recieved different rewards. That seems absurd–in both cases, all that’s happening is that all the assignments are averaged.

You said I was paying too much attention to what labels are attached to these assignments. But I guess what’s going on is, it seems to me that in this particular case, the label (or rather, what it refers to) is important. It seems to me that the purpose of having attendance affect the grade is different than the purpose of having a quiz affect the grade. A student’s attendance doesn’t reflect anything about the mastery of the course. Including attendance in the grade isn’t an act of assessment. It’s explicitly an act of punishment or reward. And it appears to me that Alice in my example gets rewarded less for attending than does Carl. (In the modified example, she’s not “rewarded less” for getting a hundred on the quiz–because quiz grades aren’t rewards at all. They’re assessments.)

But what think ye (all)?

9

First, I think you are putting way too much thought into this. Make it a very small percentage of the grade, however you want to calculate it, and then move on. Students will bend over backwards for 1 point without ever thinking about whether or not it will actually make a difference.

Second, I’m not following your math on the deduct 1/2 a point per missed class model. If a student aces every assignment without attending class, their score is 95. If they came to every class, it goes up to 100. If a student gets a 70 on every assignment, their grade is 66.5 if they miss every class or 71.5 if they have perfect attendance. Sure it’s a different percentage of their final grade, but you could argue the same thing about students who study their butt off for every test and then skip the final.

I am also in the position of having to include attendance. I put 5% of the grade for attendance and participation and I don’t have hard and fast rules for how to calculate that portion. It allows me some fudge factor. Most students get the full 5%. They have to be pretty blatant about blowing off the course - including rude, disruptive behavior in class- for me to deduct.

ETA: In reading your post above, it’s clear that you have a different interpretation of 10% for attendance than I (and perhaps others do). In my mind, 10% is of the 100 point final grade. You seem to be calculating it as 10% of the assignment average. In other words, your version is final grade=110% of assignment average. Is that correct?

10

If I am putting too much thought into it, then why is it that my first, intuitive idea is the one I rejected in favor of your proposal to simply have them lose points for not attending?

If I’d decided to put less thought into it, as you recommend, then by your own lights I’d be doing attendance grades the wrong way.

11

All you people saying “you’re putting too much thought into this”:

It is important for me to be careful, thoughtful and critical about this. I can not imagine how you’d want anything less from a teacher of your own.

12

My recent course had 10 points for attendance/class participation. If we missed more than 1 of the 10 classes, our participation would be 0.

13

Class prep will take as much time as you let it. I appreciate that you are really thinking about all of the options, but you do not have time to think this in depth about everything in your class. In the grand scheme of the course, the attendance policy is not worth this much time. Other issues deserve this time and thought.

14

Something I should note: I don’t believe in what many teachers call “fudge factor.”

To the extent possible, grades should be calculated objectively and openly.

I understand certain kinds of assignments (certain kinds of essays for example) can’t be graded in a way that is objectively formulable.

But given the assignment grades, the course grade should never have a “fudge factor” included. Such “factors” are simply ways teachers allow themselves to ignore actual achievement and instead reward behaviors they personally enjoy. (Sorry, sounds harsh I know. And I know it’s never impossible to get rid of this problem–see my comment about essay assignments above–but the problem should be fought against as much as possible and the allowance of a “fudge factor” into final course grades is a very easy target in the struggle for objectivity.)

15

I only have to think about attendance once in my life, so it doesn’t seem like that much of a time investment.

Also I like math. And there’s even a bit of philosophy here too–and I like that as well.

16

Why only once? If you teach again, you can (and should) revise your syllabus.

17

The original idea was just to include attendance as one assignment among others. So if there were nine quizzes, and a student got a ninety on each of them, and the student attended every session, then the final grade would be a 91–that’s nine nineties and a single 100 averaged together.

18

Because the purpose of including attendance in the grade is to make sure that the students learn, and not just to arbitrarily punish non-compliance?

19

Different parts of the syllabus will recieve different degrees of reconsideration. I don’t imagine this particular issue will be revisited with much depth, if I am convinced I’m doing it right this time.

20

I think the problem is that you’re looking at averages and trying to figure out absolutes.

An A level person has perfect attendance and only goes up a percent? Yes. Because they’ve been averaging 90 and just got a 100. There’s not much room to go up.
An A level person has blown off the attendance and goes down 9 points. Yes. You just threw in a 0 to their grade average. Of course it’s going to make them go down considerably.

Same with the D level students. You average in a good grade to a bunch of middling grades, and the scores go up. It’s not about fair or unfair, this is just how averages work.

To take another example: throw out attendance altogether. You have 5 tests. After four tests, Alfie has a 90 and Bettie has a 60. They both ace the last test and get a 100. Alfie goes to 92 and Bettie goes to 68. Would you ever claim that the last test is unfair to Alfie because it only netted him 2 more points to Bettie’s 8?

And there’s your answer.