Instructors Bemoan Decreasing Attendance

Faculty members met in an open forum yesterday afternoon to discuss the causes of and possible solutions to declining rates of student attendance in lectures.

The meeting was sponsored by the Committee on Teaching of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate regarding a professor’s posting on the faculty listserve, Teach-net, that raised the issue of declining student attendance.

“I am hoping some ideas, maybe some more direction will come out of this,” said Steve Tollefson, director of the Office of Educational Development, which organized the event.

While not all professors noticed declining attendance in their classes, most panelists and the audience agreed that interaction between the student and teacher is important for effective learning and high attendance.

“It is important for there to be some benefit to going to class beyond what you can get elsewhere,” said Martha Olney, an economics professor on the panel. “If they could get the material that was being presented in class from some other resource, they would get it from some other resource.”

Some panelists said some of the dropping attendance rates could be due to the availability of technology such as webcasts.

“The whole idea of webcasting was that if a student didn’t understand something, they could go back and watch it again. It was a tool to help them—it was never meant as a substitute,” said panelist Vince Resh, a professor of environmental science, policy and management.

While many agreed that webcasts were an effective study tool, they did not believe they were meant to replace direct interaction and teaching.

“The idea is to provide something that you cannot get in your podcast, webcast or book, and that is interaction. It’s important to have a back-and-forth, and that is difficult to get in a webcast,” said statistics professor Ani Adhikari, who sat on the panel.

Declining attendance does not mean that students are not engaged in the course, said panelist Timothy Yiu, a molecular and cell biology student who sat on the panel.

“Just because students aren’t showing up to the class doesn’t mean they are learning less,” he said.

Panel members discussed various ways of getting students to attend lectures, including points for participation and interactive tools such as electronic transmitters, which are used to survey students in class.

Not all professors lamented the role of technology in decreasing student attendance.

“I see it as an opportunity to reconstruct education, how we teach,” said panelist Americ Azevedo, a computer science and interdisciplinary studies lecturer. “Maybe we can change what the lecture is. Maybe it’s not about presenting the same information each year.”

Julia Szinai of The Daily Californian contributed to this report.

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