Lecture Attendance Requirements
The discussion
Priya: I think the university should make lecture attendance compulsory again. When I started, half the room was empty by week four, and the students who skipped were the ones emailing in a panic before exams.
Tomasz: I disagree, because I'm paying for the degree, not for someone to take a register. I work twenty hours a week, and watching the recording at double speed at night is the only way I keep up.
Amara: I'm somewhere in the middle. Attendance for its own sake is pointless, but small seminars are different, because if three people turn up the discussion collapses and everyone loses out.
Priya: That's fair, but even in lectures you lose something. The lecturer can't read the room, nobody asks questions, and the recordings end up being a monologue.
Tomasz: Then fix the lectures rather than policing attendance. If a session is genuinely interactive, people will come without being forced, and the ones who don't would have learned nothing sitting there anyway.
Amara: Actually, Tomasz has moved me a bit on that. Maybe the answer is compulsory seminars, optional lectures, and departments tracking which lectures people actually watch so they can improve the weak ones.