Taking attendance can be a daunting task, especially in larger courses. Low tech approaches to attendance taking, such as calling attendance or sign in sheets, may require too many resources, are easily circumvented, or use up valuable classroom time. It may be tempting to use geolocation features on audience response tools (such as iClicker) to get an accurate count of which students are in lecture. Unfortunately, there are some very compelling reasons why geolocation features are not a good idea to implement in a course. We’ll briefly discuss why geolocation is not an effective tool for attendance, and then offer some suggestions for taking attendance without implementing it.
Rethinking Geolocation
Despite the claims of geolocation, it is quite often not accurate to the specificity needed for taking attendance with. Geolocation using any GPS, let alone the systems in students’ phones, is notorious for drifting distances that would place students outside of the acceptable range for attendance features to count them present. This means that at the time that attendance is taken using geolocation, a number of students who are present will appear to be outside of the area. That number would only increase with the size of the class. This issue is made even worse when GPS signals are reflected off of high buildings, which will always be the case on central campus.
Students may also have geolocation turned off for very compelling reasons. They may have geolocation turned off because they have been a victim of stalking, abuse, or any other situation where they do not want specific people to learn of their exact location. Geolocation could also be turned off for privacy reasons, as mobile app developers often collect and sell geolocation data to advertisers, scammers, private investigators, and even governments. A student who is at risk due to their politics or identity may not want information about where they are or who they interact with to be available. Even within the United States, government agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (or ICE) have purchased private data such as geolocation from data brokers in their investigations. While iClicker themselves have a data security agreement with UofM, the phone service providers do not.
In addition, geolocation is an active feature on devices, meaning that it draws a constant amount of power, meaning some students may have it turned off to save power on older devices that do not hold a charge well.
Another significant argument against using geolocation is that it still doesn’t prevent bad actors from gaming the system. Geolocation spoofing is not difficult to accomplish using a cell phone, meaning that someone willing to go to the trouble can set their location to a chosen spot they are not really at. Spoofers working in tandem via instant messaging with someone in the classroom could easily circumvent the restricted geolocation fence. Setting a geolocation restriction also does not prevent someone from utilizing two devices - one for themselves and one for someone else.
Attendance Strategies That Work
The good news is that there are solutions already available that do not involve geolocation. One solution would be to add several think-pair-share activities to the lecture. This kind of in-person interactivity goes a long way to add value to the in-person class and encourage students to attend, and pair activities can be done easily even in a lecture hall.
Adding an “exit ticket” activity for students to complete in the last few minutes of class is another possible solution. Asking students to respond to a short-answer iClicker question such as what point they found most confusing or would most appreciate follow-up on requires students to think about the lecture and respond in a way that only those who attended and paid some attention will be able to.
Another solution would be to write some piece of information on the whiteboard or chalkboard of the classroom, which would then be used to answer an iClicker question. This can take the shape of a short phrase, a variable for an equation, a color, or picture. There are some accessibility considerations for this approach, but it can be used in conjunction with the other solutions to combat students answering iClicker questions without being present.
It is also worth considering that students tend to have better attendance in courses that engage in some level of active learning. Adding active learning elements, such as the examples in our Active Learning Framework, can give students an incentive to attend class rather than rely on peer notes or lecture capture.
If you are interested in learning more about these techniques and about how they can be personalized for a specific course, reach out to the Learning and Teaching Consultants today.
