If the sight of empty seats in your classroom is getting you down, you’re not alone. Anecdotally, we hear about poor attendance in classes large and small, and data supports this. One UK study (Williams, 2022) found that 76% of faculty respondents had experienced lower attendance. According to the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), attendance reached record lows during the pandemic, and while those numbers are slowly rising, many faculty are still seeing smaller numbers of students in class.
One reason for this might be that faculty have retained many of the flexible policies they adopted during the pandemic. Lenient attendance policies, recorded lectures, more robust Canvas pages: these were all important, trauma-informed, student-centered improvements to many courses. But that flexibility might also lead to smaller classes, as students juggle their health, work, and extracurricular obligations. If I can watch the lecture video on my own time, they may be thinking, why do I need to go to class?
The answer may be obvious, but it’s worth having that discussion with the class. What can they get if they attend class that they can’t get from a lecture recording? “We need to give students a varied experience. It’s really important to think about not just what you’re teaching–the content of the material and what you’re doing–but what is it like to be in the seat in that room? What is it like to sit for 50 minutes or 75 minutes in a room in that one seat?” says James Lang, author of Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning (Young, 2023). So let’s consider some ways to vary the traditional lecture that may be applied in classes both big and small.
Think in Chunks
Rather than thinking about the class as one 50 or 80-minute period, think about each class as several 10-15 minute chunks. Then consider the teaching tools in your toolbox: lecture, group discussion, graded activity, in-class writing, video clips, etc. One 50-minute class might include a number of those tools:
- iClicker reflection activity (on the last class’s material) (5 minutes)
- Lecture (10 minutes max)
- Application of lecture concepts–work on questions in groups of 2 or 3 (10 minutes)
- Discussion of activity (5 minutes)
- Lecture (10 minutes max)
- Application of lecture concepts, and submit for grade (10 minutes)
It would be much harder for a student to suggest that such a schedule could be easily replicated by watching a lecture recording.
Grade In-Class Work
An authentic way to grade attendance is to provide opportunities for in-class graded work, as suggested by the above schedule. This could be individual or group activities, and you could require paper or Canvas submissions. For instance, case studies are useful in many disciplines. Pairs or groups could work through a case study together, jotting down their response to be collected at the end of class, or submitted as an in-class discussion board to Canvas. In a literature class, they might submit their own discussion questions on a reading assignment, to be collected and shared with the class.
Grading for this work can be simple–a grade for completion is enough to encourage students to attend, especially if they are only allowed to make up a certain number of in-class submissions.
This may mean that you need to move some lecture content online. Remember to think in chunks there, too. Limit lecture videos to ten minutes at most. Not sure how to record a lecture? LTC and Instructional Video can help with that.
Show Your Love for Your Subject Matter
In a large survey course we may be so focused on covering a breadth of topics, that we forget about sharing the small things that made us fall in love with our fields. Or we may think that such sharing makes more sense in upper-level courses designed for majors. But showing that enthusiasm even in large-enrollment courses can have a major impact on attendance.
Rachel Davenport, a lecturer in biology at Texas State, has found such passion an important teaching tool, and has seen high attendance levels as a result. She says (Young, 2023) “I tell them explicitly, not implicitly, but explicitly how excited I am that they’re there and how cool I think this stuff is.” Along with active learning strategies like those mentioned above, she includes real-world examples to show the relevance of the course material.
Integrate Real-World Connections
Beyond just exhibiting your passion, you can include real-world applications, related pop-culture references, and related current events. These examples go further in showing your passion for a topic that your students may have little experience with, and that passion has a way of being infectious. A philosophy lesson on the Trolley Problem, for instance, is made more compelling with a clip from a popular TV show demonstrating it. If your subject matter is relevant to current events, assign your students to do the work themselves, to find that connection and share it with peers. It’s a good way to remind students of the connection between what happens within the classroom and what happens outside of it.
Where to Start?
Interested in using these strategies, but not sure where to start? Contact an LTC Consultant for guidance, resources, and support.
References:
National Survey of Student Engagement. (2022). Rebounding Engagement: Has Higher Education Returned to "Normal"? https://nsse.indiana.edu/research/annual-results/2022/story1.html
Williams, T. (2022). Class attendance plummets post-Covid. Times Higher Education, https://proxy.lib.umich.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/trade-journals/class-attendance-plummets-post-covid/docview/2673601084/se-2
Young, J. R. (2023, January 10). How Instructors Are Adapting to a Rise in Student Disengagement. Edsurge. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2023-01-10-how-instructors-are-adapting-to-a-rise-in-student-disengagement
