As the end of the semester approaches, I’m noticing fewer students signing into my synchronous online classes. I’m also noticing that some students sign in, don’t turn on webcams, and do not respond when asked verbally or in text chat to answer questions. These students log into Zoom and then completely ignore whatever might be happening in class.
How to increase student “presence” in a course? The usual solution — whether face-to-face or online — is to make attendance obligatory and penalize students when they are absent. Early in my teaching career I abandoned this type of policy because I got tired of deciphering students’ claims about “excused” absences. I have no interest in learning about students’ medical or other problems, and I don’t want sick students attending class only to avoid exceeding an allowed number of absences. I believe that legal adults get to set their own priorities and suffer the consequences of their decisions. And students who don’t regularly attend and participate in my classes invariably do poorly grade-wise anyway. That’s their choice.
But that was the pre-Covid era. Given the difficulty students had with the transition to online instruction last spring, there is a chance that the student with mediocre academic performance in the physical classroom is doing terribly as an online student, simply because their time management skills, motivation, and willingness to exert effort weren’t great to begin with.
So I’m starting to experiment with a few techniques that I’m hoping will increase student participation in my synchronous online courses next semester. I believe they will operate as positive reinforcement rather than as a punitive attendance policy.
Continue reading “Preventing Zoombies”