Students at Northern Arizona University will have a hard time skipping large classes next fall because of a new attendance monitoring system.
The new system will use sensors to detect students’ university identification cards when they enter classrooms, according to NAU spokesperson Tom Bauer. The data will be recorded and available for professors to examine.
Bauer said the university’s main goal with the sensor system is to increase attendance and student performance.
“People are saying we are using surveillance or Orwellian [tactics] and, boy, I’m like ‘wow,’ I didn’t know taking attendance qualified as surveillance,” Bauer said.
University President John Haeger is encouraging professors to have attendance be a part of students’ grades, but he added it is not mandatory and up to each professor to decide, Bauer said.
Haeger added the sensors, paid for by federal stimulus money, initially would only be installed in large freshmen and sophomore classes with more than 50 students.
NAU Student Body President Kathleen Templin said most students seem to be against the new system. She added students have started Facebook groups and petitions against the sensor system.
NAU sophomore Rachel Brackett created one of the most popular Facebook groups, “NAU Against Proximity Cards,” which has more than 1,400 members.
Brackett said she chooses to go to class, and it is a right she hopes to preserve. She said not being forced to go to class is a part of the college experience.
“I feel as though having students make it their own decision to go to class is part of the process of becoming mature adults,” Brackett said.
Adam Kissel, director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said this is the first time he has heard of such a system.
Kissel added if the school is strictly using the system for taking attendance in classrooms there would probably be no harm.
Kissel said with enough sensors, the system could be used to track students’ presence on campus 24 hours a day, which would be a problem for students’ rights.
“One thing that we find here at FIRE is that if the rule is there or the technology is there, the university will probably use it,” Kissel said.
Brackett said she feels the sensor system is an invasion of privacy. She said in theory, with the recorded data, many people in the university would be able to track students’ locations.
“It’s just one more step in the wrong direction…. I am finding out the more I study this particular issue,” Brackett said.
While some say the system is Orwellian, it is similar to an existing University of Wisconsin practice. Some UW classes use electronic clickers to take attendance and have students answer questions during class.
UW professor Dana Geary, who uses the clickers for one of her classes, said the clickers do not seem to affect the number of students who attend class.
Geary added the attendance grades were useful in helping her make decisions in grading for students whose grades were right at a boundary level.
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Somehow I suspect what we’ll really see is that a number of students will be carrying multiple cards for friends.
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Students will only show up to class if there is an incentive to attend. A consequence is not an incentive. If your class is boring, uninteresting and students are forced to take it (IE, General education requirement classes), then your students will most likely not attend at all.
This system will not increase attendance. In fact, students will find a way to cheat the system. After all, finding a way to cheat the system will be more interesting than the class.
Let’s focus our energy on creating incentives for students to attend class, and steer away from instilling more punishments.
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Skipping class? NAU high-tech system will know by Anne Ryman - Apr. 27, 2010 12:00 AM The Arizona Republic http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/04/27/20100427nau-student-attendance.html
Skipping Class? Sensors Are Watching By Andrea Fuller - April 27, 2010, 03:00 PM ET The Chronicle of Higher Education http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Skipping-Class-Sensors-Are/23530/
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What happens if you accidentally forget your student id in the room? Do you have to follow up with the professor for credit for that day? Will the professor even care if they have 20 students doing this to them a day?
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With regards to ID cards… One of the policies here at NAU is actually that you use your ID card to get into your residence hall, and has been for several years, since 2007 I believe.
Additionally, our cards have had prox/rfid sensors in them for quite awhile before that, and we use them for other things such as on-campus purchases as well.
I don’t know what attendance is like at other schools, but nearly every class I’ve attended here, over the course of four years, has taken attended in some form, even if it has only been informal. I would much prefer that teachers of large classes do so in a centrally managed electronic way, than something like a paper that gets passed around.
Overcrowding, which is also an issue here at NAU, may also be at work. Quite simply, my stance on the issue is that if you think you’re better than to regularly show up to class, you shouldn’t be here. I don’t want to see you on the pedway, I don’t want to see you bring your computer to the technology center to get viruses removed, and I don’t want to see you in the dining hall or in a local restaurant. Students who don’t want their university to try to help them to succeed have just one “right” —- to go somewhere else. ASU, just down the mountain, is a far better party school anywya.
Another thing to know is that NAU has a fairly extensive distance learning application, and I suspect that for most degrees offered here, it would be possible to do the entire thing online, if at the ripe age of eighteen you have so much that’s more important than attending classes, you can pick which ones you want, and do them at your leisure from your computer. Plenty of people do this, and some people get entire degrees this way.
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So just showing up is a way to earn grades? Why not hand out points for correctly filling in your name at the top of the exam while you are at it?
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You pay thousands of dollars as a student to attend a college only to have a collar put around you neck. What is the world coming to?
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Note to self: If someone has “Northern Arizona University” on their resume, do NOT bring them in for an interview.
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If they were only going to use it for attendance that would not be an issue. But it won’t stop there, The data will be made available to other professors. and who knows who else.
The university may swear up and down, Facebook changed their mind about privacy, so did Google, and Microsoft, and many others. There is no check and balance to makes sure.
Why is this idea so hard for people to wrap their brains around?
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Well, this certainly diminishes my respect in Northern Arizona University. University is not high school, and it’s not baby-sitting. Seeing a university class take attendance is a bit lame. The purpose of university should be to help students learn — if they want to learn. If students do not want to learn, they are adults; that is their call.
Tracking every movement of the students, just so they can take attendance, strikes me as simultaneously Orwellian and pedagogically pointless.
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If students don’t want to learn and go to class, then why are they going to a tax subsidized public school and effectively wasting taxpayer money?
Incentives to go to class? How about learning? If you need an incentive to go to class then you have to question why you are at college to begin with.
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Y’all got Slashdotted.
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The comment “Geary added the attendance grades were useful in helping her make decisions in grading for students whose grades were right at a boundary level.” strikes me as a rather odd criteria….
That that mean that she gives the highest grade to those who attend the most and are struggling?
Or does that mean that she gives the highest grade to those who skip, yet continue to do well thereby demonstrating good use of their time?
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If you show up to class and have border line grades, it means you are trying, or at least it shows that you “might” be trying to learn by coming to class everytime.
If you do not show up to class, and are borderline, there is nothing to show that you “might” be trying. It jsut shows that either 1) you are not bothered about coming to class and trying or 2) you are smart and can mange a borderline without coming to class but then again..nothing to show that you are trying.
I am not against missing classes if you can handle it..but for the borderline ones…attendance does show teachers that they are trying.
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If I pay thousands of dollars to take a class, that seat is mine whether I’m in it or not. each of these incursions into personal tracking are incremental steps to a complete surveillance society. Baby steps.
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I think what it means is that the higher grade will be given to the students who are showing their effort to learn, and the lower grade will be given to students who would probably already be getting the better grade if they bothered to show up.
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What’s with this ‘borderline student’ argument? Does it matter if you attend classes or not? If a student passes, he or she passes.
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Wow! How about making content in the class so worthwhile that students will attend because they perceive an advantage at exam time?
Part of college is learning to make adult decisions; including how to use your time. If a student makes a decision that they get more value out of skipping class to work, rest, study a more difficult class or to play xbox, let them! Instructors should make sure they are including valuable content rather than just regurgitating textbooks if they wish for student to evaluate and choose to attend.
I am disgusted to learn that this is a project on which government stimulus funds were spent. Way to go Washington!
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Mr Bauer is saying that he cannot see how this could amount to surveillance and I’m like “wow”, I didn’t realise people running universities were so naive! There are cheaper, lower-tech solutions, that produce identical results in terms of attendance recording without the possibility of invading privacy elsewhere. Putting aside the debate about compulsion to attend classes, would a swipe-card (magnetic strip) system not achieve the same end (while indeed making the carrying of multiple persons’ cards by a single person much more conspicuous) without the possibility of students being tracked without their knowledge? Plus, times are tight right? The expense of swipe cards would be a mere fraction of that of RFID cards, not to mention the hardware to read/write. Surely a university could find a better use for their limited budget.
How the attendance data is used is another debate altogether…
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http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/
Read Cory Doctorow’s book “Little Brother”, it speaks of a not so distant future where this is the norm. Interesting read and the guy gives the book away for free in electronic format.
RFID chips in cards is one step away from getting RFID chips implanted in bodies - argument, people keep cheating the system of the cards…
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I don’t think this is the huge invasion of privacy or personal rights that some people are making it out to be. It’s just like taking attendance or making clickers part of your lecture grade. That said, I think all of those practices too closely resemble some form of babysitting, which, in my opinion, has no place at a university. Especially in the big frosh lectures that these are intended to target. Like someone says in the article, getting weaned into adulthood is an important part of college. People need to learn to manage their own time and operate within their own limits, and they will have much less incentive to do so if they’re being supervised every step of the way. College is not high school; you’ve got to let out on the reins a little bit.
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“NAU sophomore Rachel Brackett created one of the most popular Facebook groups, �NAU Against Proximity Cards,� which has more than 1,400 members.”
well, there is something very wrong with that statement righ there
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it is a ridiculous notion. depending on the teacher and nature of the class, attendance is very often not at all necessary to do well. some teacher’s lecture on what is fun for them, and you can check the syllabus for what to study for exams. they are often 2 different things. it isn’t like high school. lectures may or may not be beneficial, and many teachers only want those who want meaningful give and take on a different aspect of discussion than the exam will be on. those classes may be well attended because of the intelligence, and charisma of the teacher. inspiring teachers are sometimes rare. anyone can get notes for how to pass classes taught by chapters in a book.
the bracelet is a whole different matter. it is not the right of anyone in this country to put bracelets, chips or tatoos as technology allows. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. it gets closer and closer towards treating people like cattle. and, make no mistake, that is what many in what they consider an elitist, higher version (seriously naecissistic bunch) of citizenry would love to implement. no one in their right mind, ahould ever let themselves be used in this manner.
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When I was in college they started to required attendance about half way through and it was the dumbest thing ever.
I would sign in then walk out the back of class because actually sitting through class added nothing and just wasted time.
It is the students choice to go to class or not. They are the ones paying the money and have chosen to be there not the other way around.
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This is not about taking attendance, its all about the stepping stone technique they use to get us used to surveilance. Soon you won’t be able to use the faculty toilet without punching your chip at the door.
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I think I would have to carry my ID card around in a shield (I believe a simple aluminum wrapping works) to prevent it being scanned when I went to class. Just on principle.
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It has to be at least as thick as a single-layer of soda can aluminum foil to block most readers. Sorry about the sloppy measurements but I figured this out by seat-of-pants research.
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Most troubling part of the whole article: “…paid for by federal stimulus money….” Big Brother is watching you, thanks to your and my tax dollars. I want a refund!
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As a staff member at a large university, I can say this much. If students were going to class, we wouldn’t have to investigate these technologies.
There is a major problem with student retention around the country, students aren’t turning into adults and going to class, they are getting kicked out of school because they are failing.
The real problem with this is the universities are having to raise tuition to make up for the attrition of students after the first few years, not to mention federal and state budget cuts.
The faculty and staff, don’t want to have to do this stuff, but the students are leaving us with little choice, if there is no penalty for missing class, students won’t attend.
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While I realize that student dropout rate is a problem, this is almost certainly not going to be a solution. The students that miss class will still miss class, and the ones that go will still go.
The biggest difference now is that this will be a deterrent to students applying to and attending this college in the first place.
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Really? In this recession, aren’t most public university turning away students that otherwise would have gotten in easily?
I’ve been on both sides of the lecture hall, and attendance is a lazy, lousy metric for learning. A far better method is at the end of class to have students answer a question or two about the contents of the lecture (or do a related problem for a math/science lecture). Doesn’t even have to be every day, but often enough that students are kept guessing when they might miss out on a few points, and it helps make lecture more engaging. A clever professor makes these points “extra credit”, making them a carrot, not a stick. Of course, most classes are graded on a curve, so these points will skew the curve slightly for those who earn them. Of course, this takes time to grade on the part of the professor.
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Perhaps the attendance problem relates to pushing young adults into debt so they can get college degrees that they will likely never use. The expansion of higher education could be a great thing, but many people are pressured by societal expectations into secondary education who have no real interest in college or pursuing careers that require no college. It is very likely that there is a strong correlation between poor attendance and those who are the least benefited by college. And please, save me the sanctimony about how everyone should go to college.
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If you can pass a course without attending class, then the class is not worth attending. Simple as that. Unless the professor is adding some worthwhile info above and beyond what can be obtained through a textbook, library, or internet access; then they serve no useful purpose beyond the creation of a syllabus. I think the ideal class is one in which the professor has “class” set up as a Q&A session for those who are running into problems with concepts while self learning (done it twice, loved it, learned the most from it).
As for Nick’s notion that universities need to do this for economic reasons, well the universities deserve to go out of business for planning their budgets around inflated numbers. If they know a certain number will drop out, fail out, or transfer out each year (and this can be estimated through statistical analysis); then they ought to plan around that number rather than the bloated freshman class……or just tighten up their admissions policies rather than exploiting students who apparently were not cut out for college in the first place.
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This is disgusting. I’m so disgusted by all of this and I don’t even live in Arizona. I don’t think schools of any type should get federal stimulus money if it’s gonna be abused like this.
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Isn’t there a better use of federal stimulus money than to install sensors to make sure adults show up for the class they paid to attend? Being present in class doesn’t guarantee you will pass the class.
I could understand an attendance policy in a smaller class where student interaction is part of the learning, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. If students can do the course work and pass the test by going to the library and reading the texts and doing other studying (which I would do for some of those large classes), then whether they attend every class should be moot — especially if it is such a large class that anything but the professor lecturing is impossible.
And if they flunk — well, they are adults. Time to grow up.
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“�I feel as though having students make it their own decision to go to class is part of the process of becoming mature adults,� Brackett said.” The choice is still yours. But at lesson now “forced” upon these students is that there are consequences of choices.
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I went to a large state university as well and once had a class that if you missed 3 lectures (for any reason even if you were sick with the flu), the professor took off a letter grade…and an additional letter grade for each class missed after those three.
That being said, the “professor” was one of the worst on campus. Getting through this class was a requirement of our degree (Computer Science). -It was ridiculous. It was a one hour class where we spent the first 10-15 minutes taking role. After that, the professor read straight from the text book (mispronouncing many words) and asked a few questions of the class which she had no idea herself how to answer. -I lost count of how many days I ended up explaining the material to her (and the class) when she’d show us an example she could not get working.
-Ironically, she loved me as a student.. While I liked her as a person, I personally could have done without her as a professor.
That being said, this is a waste of money. If you have low attendance in a class.. something’s wrong. -You either aren’t teaching a subject that’s worth learning or even applicable to your student’s “field of interest”.
What bothers me most about this is that I had a few classes in college that I only attended the first day, midterms and finals and I still pulled off the highest grade in the class. -Because of this, some of my professors tried to do things like “pop quizes” to make sure people showed up.
-My guess is that the administration looked at statistics for attendance and the “little guys” (professors) had to get creative to get people to show up. What’s bad about that?
…Well, I remember looking to my left and seeing a guy drolling on his desk asleep, and to my right and seeing a girl doing her fingernails in class. -Were they geniuses? No. Did they ride the system and get by on curved grades? Yes.
It got so bad that the professors would “throw out” the highest grade in the class and then do the curve. -Which pissed me off because I always had the highest grade.. And a 119% average (while still skipping those pop quizes and getting zeroes on them) does you nothing in a job interview when you are compared to the blonde doing her fingernails who had a 40% which was effectively curved to a 90%.
-Higher standards are a joke. If a professor’s students all fail.. he’s not doing his job apparently.. forgetting that he may just be babysitting a class full of future “management types” (i.e. the ones who don’t do or understand the work, but stand by while someone else works hard and then take credit and bonuses for it).
Better school system? Another joke. Our government wants us to be stupid enough to take on high interest debt to fund ridiculous companies by our unbridled appetite for crap made in China or India. -A dumber U.S. population is easier to control with advertisements and “news” (i.e. scare tactics).
You want an education? Do what I did… Open a book, get the basics, talk to someone smart in that field (not just any average stupid person in that field) to get the real story and then read news articles and publications while learning to filter out the “hype”. Better yet, take a psychology or sociology class and pay attention to understand what techniques your government and corporations are using to get you to buy something be it a product or a political game. Then realize you don’t get anything for free and a company wouldn’t be in business if they weren’t taking at least 30% of your money or doing like Walmart and cutting that portion down but moving products in bulk (try walking out of Walmart with a basket full of items when you go grocery shopping and then count the ones you didn’t plan on buying -I dare you).
Or don’t. And if you choose not to, I have some great swamp land down in Louisiana (now full of oil -black gold, texas tea) to sell you that just needs a little cleaning up. ;-)
By the way, in case you didn’t figure it out, Universities are a business too. They have two theories.. the “thousand arrows” theory and the “smart bomb” theory. If you throw a “thousand arrows” at a target (i.e. 40,000 students a year), you are bound to get a ton of alumni willing to either hire more of your students or donate to your school… Or the “smart bomb” where you invest good teaching resources on the best minds you can convince to come to your school. -Then you hope one of them comes up with something brilliant that you’ll take credit for, even if he drops out and proves he didn’t need you at all.. (i.e. Bill Gates and company).
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Students pay. Their teachers are the employed. Administration is the business. Of course administration want to track attendance it is good business. Attendance should never be required. Grades for participation for seminar classes, yes. Chips are one more step to Big Brother. Everyone but administration should be outraged.
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I took a number of classes, both big and small, and I honestly can’t think of a single class where both attendance was important and it would be difficult for the professor to take roll. In a chemistry lab or small discussion class attendance is critical, but in a class of 20 it’s pretty obvious when someone is absent. In your typical 100-200 student lecture class, it really isn’t important to attend every day. Some students can get by just reading the book and their friend’s lecture notes. Some students had rigorous high school classes that didn’t earn them any college credit and can surf to an easy A essentially retaking a class but paying for it.
I challenge any University administrator to walk into a big lecture hall, stand in the back, and notice what students are actually doing. Count how many have laptops open on facebook, how many are messaging their friends through their computer or iphone. Count how many are sleeping.
Typically there are 3 types of students: Those who will learn the material regardless of instruction, those who benefit from instruction, and those who are incapable of learning the material. Lecture classes are for the middle group of students (the latter group is generally a lost cause). Students who skip class almost always will see it reflected in their final grade. If they don’t, well then maybe there wasn’t any point in lecture for them?
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What if one student brought other students id cards to class with them?
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(linkback) Approve or Object? Ariz. college to position sensors to check class attendance [VOTE] - http://www.pikk.com/951d4
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I could only agree to this if a) the professor and not a TA teaches, and b) if someone actually instructs and c) the professor is rated in comparison to other faculty in regards to instruction capability - not just publications.
At large universities at least, we had multiple sections of a class of 100+ students - and instructors who taught had SRO with people sitting in aisles to take notes. Instructors who couldn’t speak english, much less instruct spoke to empty rooms except on test days. Why? If you are reading the book to me, forget it. I can read. If you are incomprehensible, forget it. I can find someone who can communicate or teach myself.
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It is a stupid idea though to claim the sensors are an invasion of privacy is silly. Skipping class is not a good thing to happen—still, let the people decide what kind of students they want to be.
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Isn’t it rather discriminatory to only install the device in LARGE freshmen?
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The college spent money on this with federal stimulus money? Aren’t there thousands of more worthy projects for an educator to advance education? College class attendance is just part of learning about responsibility.
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�People are saying we are using surveillance or Orwellian [tactics] and, boy, I�m like �wow,�
Sounds like an intelligent guy. Maybe we should monitor his speaking skills a little more closely.
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Those “clickers” UofWis uses are carried and maintained by students /entirely for that purpose/. You come to class, you turn them on, the teacher knows you’re there and can get your answer to a question along with everyone else, real-time, in understandable format.
Completely different from being passively monitored wherever you go.
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