Yesterday onwards we implemented mandatory attendance even for Ph.D. students. The logic provided is that mandatory attendance will improve student's performance.
I do not understand how it will. If a student does come to the class because attendance is mandatory, what guarantee is there, as my neigbour put it, that he/she will be receptive to the ideas discussed in the class? If the student is not interested, attending a class will not necessarily improve his/her performance in the exam. And many of us would prefer not to have a disinterested student in the class because they distract us. The performance of a student in a given course depends on many factors of which attendance is but one. It depends whether the student is interested in the subject, what teaching methodology is being adopted, did the teacher make the subject interesting, did the teacher take classes regularly, was the course properly organized, course materials that are available....there are so many parameters. So by focusing on only one parameter, how does the administration hope to fix the problem of failing grades is beyond me.
The logic completely fails when it comes to Ph.D. students. What if a student is disinterested? In India, over the years, I have seen many students enter Ph.D. course simply to avail the fellowship. Since there is no mechanism to throw them out, they remain in the system and often leave with the Ph.D degree. I do not know what they will do with it but the degree is awarded to them. Mandatory attendance will ensure that the student signs in the attendance register in the morning but does not ensure that he/she will work on their Ph.D. So what is it going to achieve?
I decided to do a little research on this subject. Most of the research has focussed on undergraduate students and the view is split. There are many papers showing that the attendance does not improve the performance while there are few that says that it does.
In our case we do have to wait and see.
I do not understand how it will. If a student does come to the class because attendance is mandatory, what guarantee is there, as my neigbour put it, that he/she will be receptive to the ideas discussed in the class? If the student is not interested, attending a class will not necessarily improve his/her performance in the exam. And many of us would prefer not to have a disinterested student in the class because they distract us. The performance of a student in a given course depends on many factors of which attendance is but one. It depends whether the student is interested in the subject, what teaching methodology is being adopted, did the teacher make the subject interesting, did the teacher take classes regularly, was the course properly organized, course materials that are available....there are so many parameters. So by focusing on only one parameter, how does the administration hope to fix the problem of failing grades is beyond me.
The logic completely fails when it comes to Ph.D. students. What if a student is disinterested? In India, over the years, I have seen many students enter Ph.D. course simply to avail the fellowship. Since there is no mechanism to throw them out, they remain in the system and often leave with the Ph.D degree. I do not know what they will do with it but the degree is awarded to them. Mandatory attendance will ensure that the student signs in the attendance register in the morning but does not ensure that he/she will work on their Ph.D. So what is it going to achieve?
I decided to do a little research on this subject. Most of the research has focussed on undergraduate students and the view is split. There are many papers showing that the attendance does not improve the performance while there are few that says that it does.
In our case we do have to wait and see.
No comments:
Post a Comment