That would be a bad idea, as those students are the ones funding your paycheck.
Of the many things I learned in college, one thing I learned above all else was to adapt to change. Change in schedules, change in curriculum, change in attendance policies, change of teaching styles, change in interest, change in project deadlines, change in test dates, and change in anything for whatever reason. Over a period of 12 years (1981-1993), about 9 of those years were spent in some college classroom from community colleges to state/polytechnic to a university. Degrees in Mathematics, Computer Science, Geography and more classes in Business Law, Business Management, Accounting, Astronomy, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Q: What did I end up doing? (Some of you already know)
A: SOCIAL SERVICES. (I am a business owner for a day program for people with developmental disabilities)
How did I get here? Adapted to change. I made the effort to attend every scheduled class on time so I can deal with every type of professor/instructor, every type of fellow student, and also throw in a collection of counselors, RA’s, campus police, administrators, etc. Ditching classes because the prof is uninteresting would be a disservice to myself when dealing with other disinteresting people in the future (trust me…they are out there in force). I have learned from other students, good and bad and how to gravitate towards the good and weed out the bad…(or at least tolerate them to a certain extent if they are harmless). When I am hiring or firing, I can readily pick out the stable from the instable, and the willing from the unwilling (to learn and adapt) to our business. I see a lot of people who remind me of my professors and fellow students over the years and since I have readily dealt with their equivalent in the classroom, I have no problems or surprises in dealing with them in working world.
Heh, did I mention that I worked full-time, got married and had a kid by 1988 while still in college? The wicked never rest.
Damn, I miss college.
And so we get back to ‘the customer is always right.’ :rolleyes:
Holy crap, all of this anger and you never even bothered to give him a syllabus? Yes, he could have asked for one, but if he was doing something that has been bothering you for weeks, couldn’t you have at least said something or handed him a syllabus and said, “You better read this if you want an A in my class…” rather than waiting for this to all come to a head like this? Perhaps he majors outside of your department in something like engineering where nobody cares if he shows up for lecture and this is his upper-division writing credit or something? Why did you have to assume, knowing that he added into your class late, that he would know all of the exceptions to the norms of his college career so far?
The phrase passive-agressive just keeps popping into my head over and over again. He’s not trying to bully you into “creating his own policies,” he’s trying to take advantage of a policy he thinks exists but doesn’t. You should have brought this up and addressed it before and corrected him of this misconception. Again, I’m not challenging your right to create an attendance policy and enforce it as you see fit, but this guy isn’t doing anything pit-worthy as far as I can tell, and you could have done a lot more yourself.
Yeah, and some of those students would expect a 15 minute comedy routine before each class too… :rolleyes:
Well, which is it? Are these adults or not? If you want all of the advantages of not being fully responsible, go for it…but then don’t be offended when you’re treated like a child.
The student received a syllabus at the beginning of semester…copies were available if he’d lost his. No reason for the OP to have to babysit him to the detriment of her efforts toward the other students.
The point isn’t that you go way out of your way to coddle anyone who asks for it, the point is that you don’t deliberately piss off the people who you earn your living from (not to mention ones who fill out professor evaluation forms).
I can accept the fact that a pizza place will not stock a premium specialty very expensive brand of whatever topping just for me (i.e. they’re not going out of their way to accomodate me just because I’m a customer), but I sure wouldn’t take kindly to them deliberately pissing me off by delivering my pizza cold or spitting in it. Is the line fuzzy? Perhaps, but it seems to me there’s one there.
I’ll use the above as a catch-all for those who somehow think that the OP is being dictatorial by establishing a policy whereby a student’s grade is partially determined on whether they attend the class or not are missing several key points:
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Often instructors are required, either via policy established by the college administration or mandated via state/federal law to take attendence (especially with regards to financial aid). Often this requirement is explicitly stated in the course syllabus (either attendence is mandatory and will be kept or that attendence is kept in order to satisify financial aid reporting). So those that have issues regarding attendence policies should direct their ire towards the institutions administrators, not the instructors. Likewise, similar ire should be directed towards those in the state/federal legislative bodies that mandate by law keeping attendence records, especially for purposes of financial aid.
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Whether or not this attendence policy has any bearing on a student’s grade varies from institution to institution. Where I teach, we are not allowed to determine a student’s grade (or a portion of a student’s grade) based on attendence alone. However, we are allowed to determine a student’s grade based on work that is done in a classroom. And if a student isn’t in class on a day when a particular assignment/activity is done, then it is within the instructor’s perview to penalize the student for not doing that particular assignment/activity in class.
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With the above scenario (in my case) - this information is explicitly spelled out in the course syllabus, and one in which I go over the first day of class (I’ve even gone so far as to have an actual assignment based on the students having read the syllabus in the hopes that all the students are clear regarding the information set forth therein). It is also explicitly spelled out in the syllabus important due dates with respect to assignments, exams, papers, etc. and that if this conflicts with a students schedule in some fashion to inform me immediately of any conflicts so as to accomodate the student as much as possible. If a student feels that my attendence policy is too dictatorial/too restrictive, then he/she is free to drop the course.
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Experience has shown that a student who attends class on a regular basis does better than a student who doesn’t. So there is a sound for reason for why some institutions require mandatory attendence, or why instructors require attendence. It’s not that we are trying to stroke our egos or demonstrate our dictatorial tendencies (however it may appear to many to be); but rather to provide a framework within which as many students as possible can do well.
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Having a strict attendence policy (and basing a portion of a student’s grade on that attendence), believe it or not, provides students a level of accountability (or rather those entities that are footing the students bill for attending college - parents or the government). If you were a parent and wanted to send your kid to college, which institution do you think cares more about wanting your kid to succeed - institution A that doesn’t have an attendence policy or instructor’s not caring whether your kid comes to class our not; or institution B, which has a stated attendence policy or instructor’s who force students to attend their courses? Johnny or Suzie BMOC may prefer A over B, but parents may prefer B over A. As least institution B has some level of accountability in ensuring that their kid is attending class and not doing something else.
Personally, I think mandatory attendence policies are silly. I would love not having to keep attendence for any reason. But my institution requires that I do so.
I also am not personally found of basing a portion of a students grade on attendence (as I mentioned above, we’re not allowed based on attendence alone). But time and time again, I find that those students who do not attend class on a regular basis do not do well. So to rectify the situation, my course is structured in such a way that a portion of a student’s grade is based on some assignments/acitivities done in class. This way, I can at reach some of those who might normally “blow-off” class anyway and thus improve their chances of doing well in the course.
Y’know, there’s one aspect of this that needs to be addressed: Most undergrads, especially freshmen, are idiots.
Last semester I basically dropped all attendance requirements for my writing classes. My attitude had always been that if you can write an A essay without my help, God bless ya (which is what so many here seem to want); so I took it to the logical extreme. By the end of the semester, my 8 a.m. class was averaging 9 people a day out of 25 registered (my afternoon classes ran far higher, so I didn’t take it personally).
Amazingly, the students who came to class turned in good papers and did well. Those who didn’t turned in shite. There may have been one or two that stopped coming who turned in B papers, but most of them were Cs and Ds. Usually the problems were things that could have been fixed by coming to class: they didn’t follow the written directions carefully, they made errors we targeted in peer-review, they said they couldn’t find enough sources after missing the Library tutorial … that kind of thing.
The problem was that they all, like 99.998% of 19-year olds, weren’t as smart as they thought they were. They thought, they understood what “analysis” meant, but they didn’t. They thought they understood the rules for documentation, but they didn’t. By the time they figured it out they had a nice fat C-minus on their transcript.
Now, this may not quite completely lead to the conclusion you think; because most of us need to get our ass kicked now and again, and no-one more than teenagers who think they know more than they actually do. So maybe even if they didn’t learn what the course was about, they did learn something else.
Maybe. In reality, though, I think most of them still don’t properly connect the twin data points of “I didn’t learn annything” and “I didn’t go to class.” Far more likely that they think the latter caused the former.
The final irony? Guess who got to fill out Instructor Evaluations on the next-to-last day of class? Why, it was my motivated faithful attenders. They got As and Bs, and they all loved me.
According to the surveys, I was a kick-ass teacher last semester. I don’t agree.
Damn, you epy, for stealing my point. :mad: 
It’s not as obvious as you stated…and how would you (or “bully”) know that each lecture would be redundant unless you/bully went to every lecture?
As a business owner, I would not hire a student with this attitude regardless of grade. I want someone who can learn and adapt as well as tolerate the bad along with good parts of the job as well as the work schedule. Am I going out on a limb here and assume that college students are there so they can be eligible for better jobs in the future?
See the connection? (The last ex-employee of mine who was a student did not.)
So, maybe I shouldn’t give a merit raise for good attendance since it shouldn’t be considered as part of the job… :rolleyes:
Naw - your point is a good one, too 
I wouldn’t go so far as to say freshmen/sophmores are idiots (some are, to be sure). Rather, I think it’s more in thinking one knows more about a particular topic/issue/subject than one actually does. Some obviously do know a lot - but some don’t. It’s partially one of age and inexperience - how many of us can remember back when we were that age and how smart/knowledgable we all thought we were?
I disagree, based on what you said. Your job is to teach them how to write and grade the end result, not to coddle them through the process to make sure that they pass. If they don’t want to come the class, the implied risk they take is that they will miss something and ultimately do poorly-- your responsibility should end after warning them of that. If they can skip the entire year and turn in an A paper, then more power to them. If they skip the entire year and fail, then it’s their own damn fault.
As already pointed out, you gotta be in the class to fill out the evaluation forms, and that’s usually done at the end of the quarter/semester when most of the problem students have already been weeded out.
In this case, I see Viva’s “bully” being the exception to the rule, and not the majority of students that she deals with when it comes to her attendance policy. Most professors do listen to substantive reason. If I was the student who had a religious obligation, I would have at least attempted to bring in some sort of documentation to substantiate my absense and not ram my dubious agenda down her throat…after the absense and absent of documentation. If my policies and my adherence to them pisses off 1 in 25 students, then I guess I will have to live with a “horrible” 96% approval rating on my attendance policy…that is if everyone showed up for my evaluation.
The problem, Caphis, (and this may hijack the thread slightly) is that very few students are as mature as they claim, or as they think they are. When you do treat them like adults (warning them on the syllabus, for example, that failure to attend class may deprive them of information they may well need to write their papers properly), a good chunk of them will, late in the term, request some “extra-credit homework” or other baby-shit to compensate for their low grades on the first couple of papers.
Repeat this experience often enough, and you come to the conclusion that they’re only claiming mature status when it has advantages like missing scads of classes. When the piper needs to be paid, they’re whiny little children crying for a second chance, please, please, please, Doctor Ruber, I’ll be good this time, I promise…
vivalostwages, I’m just curious. What subject do you teach?
What’s a little hyperbole among freinds?
I can. I was an idiot. 
…and this is the problem of the professor how? Sorry, I just have a more “tough shit, you knew the consequences, try again next semester” view of things. Especially because these kinds of students are the ones who kept students like me (who COULD skip class and ace everything) under the net of mandatory attendance policies, thus effectively wasting my time.
And I feel I can quit reading the thread right there. That sums it all up for me. On the one hand, I think the Bully is a first rate spoiled brat POS. On the other, I think that grading by attendance is BS. On a third hand (imagination folks!) I think that if you sign up for a course that has such restrictions, you have to hold to your agreement.
In the end, I just quit school. Too much concern for how students behave, not enough for what they know. I didn’t like the structure they set up, so I chose not to participate. I was one of the “didn’t do the assignment because I learned the lesson by listening” students. If I had stayed in school for college, I’m sure I’d have fallen into the “didn’t attend class, but passed finals” category.
Then I agree with you, Caphis, and sympathize.
But you’re outvoted. For every student who’s willing to live with a tough-shit policy (i.e., your written work determines your grade, period) there are eight or ten students who whine about needing the extra credit.
Another problem is that, in writing classes, I have the students do a LOT of in-class writing and peer-editing, which can’t be made up. So your “A” is starting to look a lot like “C” work when the end of the term comes.