Yesterday I had about a third of my students turn up for class. Possibly that was related to the deadline for an essay due for me later that day – certainly the number who turned up was about the same as the number who’d already submitted the work.
Since I’ve known that this was going to be an awkward timing since the start of semester, back in early October, I’d left some of the session open, so I could be flexible about what to do, including not asking for any specific prep beyond the general reading.
In the event, I spent a block of the class talking about assessment. Unsurprisingly, since they’d already submitted, none of the students who turned up wanted to talk about the essay, but they did want to talk about the exam, which’ll be after the Christmas break.
So we discussed how that would work (we’re doing a seen-paper format, so they get it a week beforehand) and what I was looking for.
So what’s the problem?
Well, the people who turned up yesterday are the ones who most likely didn’t need the discussion, either because they’d have worked out the salient points already, or because they’d have asked. Indeed, the student who asked about the exam some weeks ago was there.
The issue is for those who didn’t turn up, the ones still working on their essay a couple of hours ahead of the deadline, the ones will the poor attendance throughout the semester.
This is a classic of the Matthew Principle: those that have, get more. And it’s not really helped by me being a bit petty-minded.
I could have waited until next week’s final class to discuss the exam – and probably someone who wasn’t there yesterday will ask about it – but I have also spent two months trying to reinforce the message that the rational choice for a student who’s finding it hard going is to come to class, because that’s the best place to get the essentials together, and to get questions answered.
Partly, this is about incentives. For my other class, on negotiation, I have great attendance, mainly because the classwork is very active and because the assessment is about what you’ve done in class. In this case, the work is more mixed and it’s not directly linked.
Maybe I need to be thinking about whether I can change that, in a way that works for the subject matter.
But maybe I also need to think more about how much this is a case of taking horses to water: where do me responsibilities lie and where do they end?
Maybe one for class discussion next week.