I "lurked" during a CSU journalism department meeting on Monday which included an option to join on Zoom rather than driving up to Fort Collins. It was clunky, as these things often are, and those of us on Zoom were soon forgotten as the discussion ebbed and flowed. Most of the time, I had no idea who was talking but I could hear most of what was said.
And what was said was somewhat surprising, honestly. I mean, Colorado State is a major university serving over 30,000 students and one of the flagship state institutions. Journalism and Media Communications majors occupy thousands of positions in media organizations of all sizes and types.
But the topic that produced the most discussion was basically, "What do we do about students who seem intent on doing the least possible amount of work?" That included attendance problems for those on campus.
There was some confusion, but the consensus was that the university had a rule or policy that instructors can only penalize for lack of attendance up to 10 percent of the final grade. This may be a campus myth or may be communicated in informal ways, but there is no clear university published policy that I can find. The department chair had no data to refer to but said that if your syllabus spells out attendance policies, you can do as you wish with grading. She said she would check with the higher ups and get back to everyone. And she might... just not yet.
It reminds me of the Metro State English department policy that is communicated to faculty that no more than a 10 percent penalty for even egregious grammar and spelling errors can be applied to any essay score. Again, I am not sure this is published or just "faculty expectations." That policy makes sense to me as many Metro students are English as a second language students, and many are what I might term "non-traditional" college students... often the first in their families to attend a university.
On the other hand, I can make a strong argument that an essay so riddled with errors as to become incomprehensible (and I had one of those this week) ends up being marked down mostly due to failure to make any clear argument. The errors might not be needed to provide a very low score for some essays.
I often wonder how a dispute over this might be adjudicated. "May it please the Court, I deducted 3 percent for the student having a dozen misspelled words that Word or Google should have flagged..."
But back to the faculty meeting: there were a series of stories of individuals who have pushed the limits, missing up to 80 percent of classes, and one tale of a large lecture class that featured 8 in attendance, in a class with 86 enrolled, during a nasty weather day. Again, that seems possible, and if it's just a one-off, who cares? The professor proudly proclaimed that he had posted the lecture using the university's online video system and that he "knew" that 60 students had seen the class online since he uses some online quick quizzes to check for understanding.
Interestingly, the people who speak up during these discussions rarely admit to being completely list as to how to get students to attend or participate. In fact, there are so many stories of successes that an observer in Highlands Ranch (like me) might begin to wonder if there really is a problem after all.
My sense, though, was that many in the room were having trouble not only with attendance, but with submitting assignments, meeting deadlines, and a general lack of engagement.
In other words, college students are not much different from high school students in being less and less engaged in their learning and in education, generally.
I read today that about 30 percent of Americans read at or below the expected reading level of a ten-year-old child. Think about that. College students are not in that group but the effects of phones and the pandemic have combined to create a huge population that doesn't read and sees no reason to do so.
After all, AI will take care of all that.
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