The faculty of different colleges and schools are already evaluating the methods through which the effective learning process could be reported among students. Most of the professors and academic professionals recommended the method of attendance requirement as a way to promote effective learning among students. This paper aims to find out whether attendance requirement plays an effective role in achieving improved student learning or not.
Attendance requirements in schools and colleges are not a new regulatory phenomenon. The requirement of attendance is considered to be a very effective way to improve student learning. According to research conducted by Robert E. Ledman and Felix Kampuchea in 2002 noted that the students who failed to achieve higher test scores are due to the fact that they do not attend classes regularly as 78% of professors test students on the basis of their regular lectures (Ledman and Kamuche).
Students who are marked present on a regular basis have more material for the course leading to a quick understanding of subjects and presentation of knowledge in key assignments and models. Another research article concluded that attendance makes a significant increase in explaining class and academic grades. Higher attendance of a student performs an overall impression of reduced odds of students in a course (Minnesota State University).
Experiment to Evaluate Effectiveness of Attendance Requirement
Teachers can easily evaluate the advantages of attendance requirements with the help of planned assessment. Planned assessments and closer observation of the student’s participation in the class should be given points so that students would feel encouraged to remain punctual in taking the class. A lot of assessments of student effective learning should be planned at the beginning of the class year. One experiment has been discussed below:
Day 1
Provide a brief lecture on a chosen subject and assign a task to make questions regarding it.
Day 2
Conduct a class discussion forum on a particular subject and ask students to share different examples in order to answer the questions of peers.
Day 3
Start a new subject of course and continue the same process without notifying students about a surprise test that must be conducted on the day fourth of the week.
Day 4
Conduct a surprise test and evaluate the use of words, questions, and examples that would be used by students in the test paper. The teacher has to closely observe students who were marked absent in the first two classes of the subject taught in the assessment.
Results
It is predicted that students who will be marked absent during day 1 or 2 would answer the question through the context of their own knowledge without any knowledge, questions, lecture, examples, and words discussed in the class. Absent students will try to answer in a broad context of the subject.
By conducting the experiment discussed in above as a form of assessment technique, teachers could easily find out how advantageous the requirement of attendance is. Furthermore, it will be easy to understand what effective impact could be made by attendance requirements. Students can learn effectively in school, colleges if they are regular. In this way, students would be able to understand their relationship with education. Punctual students know better ways to manage time and excel quickly. It is recommended that school and college officials must put stress on the attendance requirement so that students can increase their grades and scores.
References
Ledman, R and F Kamuche. Improving Student Attendance: Does it Improve Student Learning? New York: Rapid Intellect Group, Inc., 2002.
Minnesota State University. “Class Attendance Article.” 2009. Mnsu. Web.