Why don't they come to the lecture?

Attendance in the lecture theatre is never up to expectations. Does it vary across disciplines? Is class size a factor? Is attendance getting worse? What is the trend? Regardless of the numbers, it is obvious that a large number are staying away from lectures. At the same time, there is growing discussion of distance learning and the use of technology as a substitute for direct contact teaching. A tremendous amount of time, energy and material resources are being spent in preparing and delivering lectures. Is it worth all the effort? Or should we be focussing on alternative methods of teaching? If the lecture theatre is to remain the student's first port of call in the learning process, how can we ensure its effectiveness and attraction for the student? Is being an enthusiastic and effective communicator in the lecture hall the answer to this problem, or does it lie somewhere deeper?

How useful or essential are lectures in the first place? Especially, what are the students' perceptions of the importance and benefit of attending lectures? What are their expectations anyway? What should we be doing differently? What more should or could we do? Or is the method itself inherently flawed and needs urgent rethinking? This paper will raise more questions than answers with the hope of finding a way out.

Introduction

Experience in Information Technology (IT)

Attendance in general has been found to range from about 75% for smaller units to as low as 30% for larger units. A typical average attendance figure over the semester for a small to medium sized class (up to around 100 students) has been found to be around 50% to 60%. Attendance tends to drop off after the beginning of the semester. There are further noticeable fluctuations during the semester such as during weeks when assignments are due or before mid-semester tests. Lectures scheduled early in the morning or late in the afternoon also appear to have lower attendance.

Are lectures really important?

In a survey involving students from two IT units, one with an enrolment figure of around 100 and the other with about 300 students, 36% of the students agreed to the suggestion that lectures are not essential if text books, course notes and tutorials are good. Have we been giving lectures too much emphasis? In recent years, other modes of teaching such as tutorials and laboratory sessions have suffered due to increasing budgetary constraints. Tutorial sizes have been increased and tutorials hours have been reduced as part of the belt tightening exercise while lecture theatres are becoming better equipped than ever before. There is of course no doubt about the central role of lectures in the learning process but do we have the right balance? If lectures are essential as most us would believe, how can we ensure full use of them is being made by the students?

What causes poor attendance?

It had been observed in the past that most students spend almost all of their time during the lecture copying whatever is displayed on the lecture transparencies. One undesirable consequence of this is that the student gets to spend very little time in listening to what is being said by the lecturer and misses out on the all important extra explanations and clarifications provided by the lecturer. These days, students have access to copies of lecture transparencies and/or lecture notes ahead of the lectures for most of the units. The effect of this on lecture attendance has been noticeable. There seems to be general agreement among lecturers that providing copies of the lecture notes to the students by including them in the unit Study Guide or by making them available through the computer network lowers lecture attendance. From the feedback on the two units mentioned above, student opinions on this seem to vary depending on the actual unit in question. In the more intellectually challenging unit (Principles of Computer Science) where a lot of explanation of the concepts and techniques were given during the lecture, only a minority (about 18%) of the students agreed to this notion. With the other unit (Introduction to Information Technology), where breadth of coverage rather than depth was the main characteristic of the lectures, about 59% of the students thought attendance was affected because of the availability of lecture notes in the Study Guide. Regardless of the expressed opinion, most students thought it was good idea to make lecture notes available in advance.

One other reason for low attendance given by students was lack of time due to study workload and other commitments. The figures for the two units surveyed were 20% and 42%. There seems to be a common perception among colleagues that students are not really interested in learning, they just want to know what and how much they need to study to pass the final exam and then to be left alone to do the practical work they must do to meet the unit requirement. This may be a rather sweeping statement to make, but to what extent is this true?

One suggestion put to the students was that those who do not attend the lectures just did not care, especially as attending lectures was not a requirement for successfully completing the unit. Surprisingly about half the students agreed to this idea as a possible explanation for students missing lectures. Once again, this has to be considered carefully in light of the fact that most of the students, if not all, were not speaking for themselves - as one student commented during the survey: "Why ask us, we are the ones who do come to the lecture!"

What can we do?

Are our students overworked? In an area like information technology, new advances are constantly being made resulting in the addition of new material on top of the basic principles which have to be learned. While this may not necessarily be true for every discipline, reduction of course workload and a review of the assessment procedures may be worth looking into.

We certainly provide a lot more in the way of handouts or notes on-line than in the past. Some lecturers provide notes with essential sections missing. The students have to attend lectures to fill in these gaps. Is this a reasonable approach? Perhaps there are better ways of encouraging student to attend lectures.

In conclusion

If we cannot make the students come to the lecture, should we be looking at alternative methods of teaching?

The entire discussion presented is based on the premise that attending lectures is essential for the students and that we should make every effort to ensure maximum possible attendance. If the students disagree on this, who is right? University education has now become a user-pay system. If the students do not turn up to lectures, do we say that it is their option to select the mode of study that they prefer, eg. lectures, working from text books or on-line course materials, multimedia teaching tools etc?

Should we be doing (or not doing) things to make the students attend the lectures? - For example, not providing exhaustive lecture notes.

I am finding the same. Its probably going to get worse for me because they don't have an exam and it is getting harder to persuade the students that the lectures are essential for how they complete the projects. All they want to do is be left alone to do the programming!

I have found the same thing over 7 years at ECU, so it is not specific to Murdoch.

Haven't a clue how you solve the problem - Eve

From memory this seems similar to my experience with M104 last year. I don't know what percentage but certainly attendance was less than full enrolment. I had some 8.30am lectures (particularly Mondays) where it would have been less than half.

To follow up your observation - what should/can be done about it if anything?
Paddy

How about attendance at practical sessions? Assuming that they need to practice to be able to program, are they still attending Pracs? A reason why I started allocating marks for pracs was to encourage them to come!

Paddy

I'd guess at around 50% attending my unit (M226). About 10-25% have clashes for at least one. Even at start of semester, 75% was about average. Last semester M326 was around 30-40%.
Paula

I would get maybe 40 out of 70 on a good day at this time of semester. On a bad day maybe 30. There would be about 15-20 people who I have never seen in a lecture since day 1. Mike will tell you that you need to do quizzes (assessable) to make them turn up!