Listening to Teaching in Higher Ed on “rethinking student attendance policies for deeper engagement and learning”

Teaching in Higher Ed with host Bonni Stachowiak is really one of my top 3 all time favorite podcasts. Today, I listened to her talking with Simon Cullen and Danny Oppenheimer in an episode on “rethinking student attendance policies for deeper engagement and learning“, and they talk about it in a way that really resonated with me!

In a nutshell, they let students choose between two policies: voluntary attendance and mandatory attendance. If you choose voluntary, you do what you want to do, if you choose mandatory, you have to show up (except for two or so grace sessions for when you really cannot be there). And students overwhelmingly pick mandatory attendance! They argue that this is because students know that attending classes is good for them and their learning, and they do want to make good choices. But they also know themselves well enough to recognize that if they don’t have to be there, they might get tempted to sleep in or fall into other bad habits. So they choose the option that will help them do what they really want to do. And I would do the same! And also students appreciate having the autonomy to make the decision to, in a sense, give up their autonomy, as I would, too.

Interestingly, the control group with just mandatory attendance in the end did not attend as much as the group that get to choose mandatory attendance, even though that latter group included students that chose to only voluntarily attend!

What they don’t discuss in the podcast are students who have caring responsibilities or need to work, for whom such a mechanism would not work. Or teaching that isn’t really worth getting out of bed for — the assumption is that attendance at least in that class is worth commuting and whatever else students have to do to be there. So, as always, these findings depend on their context. But I still think they are interesting to consider!

In the article where this research is published, Cullen & Oppenheimer (2024) on “Choosing to learn: The importance of student autonomy in higher education“, they also discuss a second intervention (which, I think, they also discuss at the beginning of the podcast, but I was not paying a lot of attention at that point yet): Letting students choose between a demanding, but free-to-switch (to the less demanding) assessment stream for the semester, and an easy stream. And offering that option seems to have increased motivation to stick with the difficult assessment and increased time on task!

In general, they recommend several autonomy-enhancing course policies, for example

• negotiating due dates
• providing “extension days” that students can distribute over the semester as they want or need
• choice between different course materials
• choice between several exam questions or project formats
• allocate assessment weights (within set bounds)
• in addition to nonnegotiable core topics, supplementary topics can be chosen

All of these come up often in articles about co-creation, but are totally worth repeating in this slightly different context, too! But I guess giving students autonomy is always also inviting co-creation to some extent… Anyway, nice article and podcast episode, check it out! :-)

Cullen, S., & Oppenheimer, D. (2024). Choosing to learn: The importance of student autonomy in higher education. Science advances, 10(29), eado6759.

Featured image from a dive in Limassol… I miss that color of water, it just recharges my soul to look at it