I came across 50 Things every MSU Teacher Should and Should not do today. In general, there are a few helpful reminders in that list for every professor. I'll comment on more items in the next few entries.
Tardiness
5. If a student shows up late, don't count them absent. They still made the effort to show up.
I don't count tardy students as absent; I count them as late. I count three tardies as one absence. In all honesty, I hate taking roll in class. Having gone to a large impersonal university as an undergrad (where undergrads were little more than student ID numbers and anonymous bodies in large auditoriums -- this did not bother me and actually I quite liked it), I'm not used to professors knowing and caring about whether students show up to class. My personal feeling is that students are adults and it shouldn't be my job to make sure they come to class every day. Still I do it because if I don't, many of the students simply do not bother to show up. They need the immediate gratification of showing up = points in order to come to class. Although in a vague way they understand that they wouldn't do well if they missed a lot of class time, they are unable to translate that understanding into practice because the final grade in class is delayed gratification.
I also find that tardy students are rather disruptive to class: 1) they (inadvertently) draw attention to themselves as they walk in and 2) they ask questions about material that I had just covered.
The other thing that bothered me about the item #5 is the last statement: They still made the effort to show up. Rewarding effort. My colleagues and I have discussions about this frequently, whether one should reward effort and if so, how much. I'm not so into rewarding effort. I believe in rewarding accomplishments. I believe that it's important to acknowledge effort, but I would rather that the final grade is reflective of their actual accomplishments in the classroom.
A why and an eavesdropping and a brief update
2 years ago