Old college-educated curmudgeons opinions sought.

[ALAYMAN]

Considering that the world has changed around me in numerous ways that I probably hadn't fully realized, as the recent discussion about STEM and woke philosophy demonstrated, I seek the collective forum knowledge about a situation that is probably fairly innocuous, but nonetheless personally perplexing. Some quick backstory first...

I came from a blue-collar background, and was one of a very few in my immediate and extended family to graduate college. My aspirations and drive for collegiate ambition was simply to get a piece of paper that would lead to a decent job/pay all in order to marry ALAYGIRLFRIEND (which all turned out as close to script as could have been imagined). I had no aspirations of being a rocket scientist or adcademian, nothing of the sort. As such, while in college, I had typical study habits that meant that only the most challenging courses demanded any serious effort on my part. That translated to a laissez-faire attitude which saw me spend way too much time in the student union, and a fair amount of time skipping fluff class lectures. Those skipped classes often either were those that ALAYGIRLFRIEND (who was pretty much a science geek straight A type) also was taking at the same time, or social science type classes with requirements that were easily passed with the most minimal efforts. The simple point is that those classes generally did nothing for me in pursuit of my area of vocational preparations, nor greatly enriched my breadth of knowledge in areas of things that interested me outside of the hard sciences. I'm not necessarily justifying the skipping of class in those cases (though both scenarios usually resulted in me earning an A in those skipped classes), but onto the point of the rambling...

It isn't that uncommon for classes to be ditched, for a variety of reasons, some of which are legitimate, some not so much. It recently came to my attention that ALAYBOY, who is doing quite well academically (though not perfect As) in pursuit of a career in medicine, began to sleep in Monday mornings and skip the 8am Chem lecture. He says that the lecture is video recorded and he has access to it. In addition, he has a classmate who attends and able to give him notes. Lastly, supposedly, the syllabus indicates that in-class attendance is optional. Rather than spill a ton more ink in this OP, the simple questions is this....

what advice and concerns would you have in this scenario (given that he indeed is getting A grades in the class skipped)?

 

[Bob Jones V]

I would not worry about it. I had 4 kids do college. My last son went to an unaccredited school in Canada and for his last semester, it was during the pandemic and they would not let him back in. He had to do all of it via video, and he did quite well.

 

[voicecrying]

I had a psych professor who didn't require attendance, but he gave a single-question quiz at the end of each class. He wrote on the chalkboard quite a bit during class and he would give the question for the quiz at the end of class. He then would start erasing the board, and erase everything except the answer for the quiz. He also scored the quizzes so that if you missed a certain (very low) number of them, it would make a point difference to your final grade (on a 4-point scale). He also counted the number of students in the class and if he received more answer sheets than the number of students, no one got credit for that quiz - so that prevented people from helping friends. I thought that was a very creative way to get people to attend class.

I ditched a lot of classes during my college days - mostly the large, lecture classes. I didn't sleep in though. I'd get in my car and go drive some twisty country roads. Most of the lecture classes were taught by professors who wrote the book for the class, so they said in class pretty much the same thing they said in the book.

I wouldn't worry too much unless his grades start dropping.

 

[abcaines]

Here's a flip side of the coin FWIW.

Grades are sometimes overrated. More often than not, they mean you are accurately regurgitating what they are feeding you. I don't think grades are as predicated on participation as they used to be. Participation isn't necessarily linked to the acquisition of knowledge aka, the ability to regurgitate, but it demonstrates character and work ethic. Say what you will about IFBx colleges and their rules but their requirements for participation does build character.

Think in the real world: do employers excuse absence based on ease of work performed or do they expect employees to be on site ready to perform?

 

[ALAYMAN]

As I expected, common sense answers so far.

As I thought about this scenario, I remembered an instructor that was a VERY well known politician, former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland. My mom had went to school with him, and he was a salt-of-the-earth democrat that was well-liked by many of the locals. When he taught me he was an up-and-comer not yet ascended to the executive office, and he dealt with psychological/educational needs at our prison at Lucasville. The course he taught me was on Abnormal Psychology, and in that class I vividly remember him teaching us in class by directly reading from the textbook in every class for almost the entire time. It became abundantly clear that I could read the textbook myself and get just as much out of it as attending class. It was in that class that I determined to NEVER read verbatim to adults in any kind of teaching/training arrangement unless I was absolutely required to do so. In that context I can surely say that there's no benefit to some professor's supplemental in-class lectures and have sympathy for skipping any such wastes of time (assuming no penalty for non-attendance is administered).

Now, fast-forwarding 30+ years, assuming there's no in-class cooperative/group activities in the lecture, I have a hard time telling ALAYBOY to go to a class wherein he could get the video presentation easily accessed at his own convenience to be viewed, rewound, paused to go potty, well, you get the idea. That is all the more true if there are no pop-quizzes or objectively valuable networking opportunities to be made with other students. I think the only consideration that subjectively enters the discussion here is that a professor with which the student maintains some sort of visible and personal relationship is one who more likely gives a "benefit-of-the-doubt" hearing to the student if there's any situations where they need the professor give a grade bump when it's on the margins between grades. Or attendance could come into play in the arena of developing that social connection that manifests itself in a recommendation for job or research grant and things like that, even then that's a bit of a stretch, and those things can be gotten by other means by the prudent student. And I guess lastly, a warning against the slippery slope and lack of character (alluded to by abcaines regarding the IFBxers harsh rules and rigid expectations) that could emerge from a lack of self-discipline.

 

[Ransom]

what advice and concerns would you have in this scenario (given that he indeed is getting A grades in the class skipped)?

He's getting A's now. I've been there. If you cultivate bad attendance habits when the going is easy, you're going to get buried when it gets harder--which it will.

Lax attendance was likely a major factor in my dropping out of engineering school. I'll grant that I attended university at a time when the lectures weren't recorded or streamed and thus available on demand, but that seems to me like a waste of time--I could attend a live lecture and spend the other hour doing something else.

Over the years--in both the engineeering and English programs--I chose a handful of bird courses, not because I was intellectually lazy, but because the rest of my schedule was hard going, and I needed something less challenging to de-stress. Since I was essentially taking those courses for fun, I don't know why i'd deliberately skip them, as it would have defeated the purpose.

When I went to college for my programming diploma a few years ago, I didn't intentionally blow off a lecture until my third term, I had a good reason, and I only did it two or three times. Bad attendance, IMO, is counterproductive. This was borne out when the faculty went on strike in my last term for about 6 weeks. The course material was all available on the college's learning management system, but I don't know of anyone in my class that actually kept up with it. Once the strike ended, the last few weeks of the term were a major catch-up for everyone.

 

[sword]

I agree with Ransom whole heartedly, bad habits breed more bad habits. Skipping now may not be an issue but it will be in advanced classes.

That being said during my grad work some lecture courses came with a powerpoint and access to the actual video online. The instructor did not care if you attended the lecture, but he did expect you to review and know the material. There were so many students there was no time for questions anyways. I missed this class several times to study for tests in more important classes and reviewed the class material at another time. Several instructors also let you attend the same class when it met on a different day to allow for conflicting work schedules. I made use of this option several times as well.

I recommend never missing a lab or a class discussion, but general lecture classes are less important as you can often just view them at another time.

I also found the study sessons with other students in the same major were oftem more instructive than the actual class and I did not hesitate to utilize the school provided tutors in subjects that were not my core compentency. They seemed to enjoy teaching and I injoyed the individual instruction. Often these studends had taken the same class a year or two before and kinda knew what was on the tests.

College provided proof readers were also invaluable. Even with papers that had been reviewed by fellow students, they often contained grammatical errors we all had missed.

 

[sword]

I would also consider giving Alayboy some space. He's in college and needs to figure some of these things out for himself. From what you have posted he seems very bright and trustworthy. Allow him the room to make a few mistakes and grow. I found they learn better that way. I was always verry accessable but I allowed them to mature and grow and all turned out well.

Side note your GPA in college means little unless you need to get into an top grad school. All you need is the degree. I worked very hard to graduate top of my class and it amounted to nothing. The students that do well in their career are the ones who have the inate talent and the one who pwerform.

 

[ALAYMAN]

He's getting A's now. I've been there. If you cultivate bad attendance habits when the going is easy, you're going to get buried when it gets harder--which it will.

Yes, absolutely, this is one of those intangibles that is a hard lesson learned because this knowledge comes from experience, which is a hard teacher.

 

[ALAYMAN]

I also found the study sessons with other students in the same major were oftem more instructive than the actual class and I did not hesitate to utilize the school provided tutors in subjects that were not my core compentency. They seemed to enjoy teaching and I injoyed the individual instruction. Often these studends had taken the same class a year or two before and kinda knew what was on the tests.

This is really gold. ALAYBOY is such a loner that he thinks being on an island by himself is a virtue. Hard to breed that out of him.

I would also consider giving Alayboy some space. He's in college and needs to figure some of these things out for himself. From what you have posted he seems very bright and trustworthy. Allow him the room to make a few mistakes and grow. I found they learn better that way. I was always verry accessable but I allowed them to mature and grow and all turned out well.

Good general advice, being attempted at this point, and to some extent being done. But to the specifics of this scenario see my response to your next (generally very good) point....

Side note your GPA in college means little unless you need to get into an top grad school. All you need is the degree. I worked very hard to graduate top of my class and it amounted to nothing. The students that do well in their career are the ones who have the inate talent and the one who pwerform.

He's pre-med so a 3.8 is almost a must, in addition to a 510+ MCAT, that leaves little room for errors to be overcome, so I don't want him to get derailed by dumb freshmen mistakes. That speech about us (the helicopter parents, lol) "taking our hands off the wheels" and turning it much more fully over to him was a central point of emphasis in our visit with him at Family Weekend last week.

 

[abcaines]

I think this quote says it all:

"If you cultivate bad attendance habits when the going is easy, you're going to get buried when it gets harder--which it will." -Ransom

Of course, you don't want to be the helicopter parent but maybe a bookmark with this quote on it would be entirely appropriate.

 

[Dr. Huk-N-Duck]

I’m old school when it comes to this type of matter (despite being younger than most on this forum). As a “soft science” major, I found myself struggling in one of my “hard science” classes. It was the last exam of the last day of class, and I recall being the last one in the room trying to figure out a way to pass my exam so I could get out of dodge with at least a “C.” Twenty years later, I still remember the professor walking over to me and saying, “You’ve never missed a lecture all semester, and I refuse to have a student with perfect attendance fail this exam. How can I help you?”

You never know when that good attendance might pay off, especially as classes get more difficult in the future. More importantly, at some point many students need a reference from a professor. The guy who skipped lectures is going to be “out of sight, out of mind.” I think in today’s world, networking is probably more important than good grades, especially when it’s time to use that degree for graduate school or a vocation.

 

[ALAYMAN]

When this semester started I mentioned in a different thread that it seemed that the model for in-class lectures had significantly changed from a one where the student came to class and received concepts which they were to take home for work, to a model where the materials/concepts were revealed prior to in-class instruction with the expectation of working on those pre-revealed concepts when the student came to the class after having worked on the concepts by self-study. While perusing tangential issues related to this thread I found out today that such an educational model is indeed an innovative paradigm shift in methodologies know as “flipping the classroom”. As part of the analysis by higher education of this methodology there is significant discussion of re-thinking the effectiveness of allowing students discretion in regards to exactly how much they are required to attend in-person lectures versus having the option of viewing pre-recorded videos.

Things that make you go hmmmmm.

 

[abcaines]

 

[aleshanee]

i am college educated.... and still relatively young so it wasn;t all that long ago..... but i must have been sick the day they covered the word curmudgeon in english vocabulary... coz i had to look it up... .. ... .and the definition i found said it was - a bad tempered person - especially an old one.... .... ..and therefor i feel i might not meet the listed criteria to answer this thread.. .. .. but either way it might not even be necessary for me to explain why i think school attendance in a class with a living breathing teacher is vitally important - because in a way i just demonstated it.... .. ... and this is not the first time i have done that since leaving college either.. ....

but on a further note... how does a student ask questions of a pre-recorded video?.... .many times the best way for an instructor to evaluate what a student is learning .... especially in courses related to the medical field... is by the quality of the questions a particular student might ask.... and in the medical fields of study every good instructor wants their students to ask questions and to have a productive back and forth exchange....... every door that is approached and opened leads to a dozen or more doors still waiting to be approached.... ....not only does a medical student need to possess an insatiable curiosity to know what is behind all those doors but a teacher needs to know the student possesses it..... ...

but it;s just my opinions.... i never actually heard a teacher say that.... it;s just something i noticed when i was struggling through pre-med myself..... .

 

[ALAYMAN]

i am college educated.... and still relatively young so it wasn;t all that long ago..... but i must have been sick the day they covered the word curmudgeon in english vocabulary... coz i had to look it up... .. ... .and the definition i found said it was - a bad tempered person - especially an old one.... .... ..

There's one among us who has long and proudly worn the moniker.

but on a further note... how does a student ask questions of a pre-recorded video?.... .many times the best way for an instructor to evaluate what a student is learning .... especially in courses related to the medical field... is by the quality of the questions a particular student might ask.... and in the medical fields of study every good instructor wants their students to ask questions and to have a productive back and forth exchange....... every door that is approached and opened leads to a dozen or more doors still waiting to be approached.... ....not only does a medical student need to possess an insatiable curiosity to know what is behind all those doors but a teacher needs to know the student possesses it..... ...

Astute observation.

Playing devil's advocate for a moment, the student who watches the video feed partially gets to watch the process of student query and professor feedback indirectly by hearing/seeing their peers ask questions that they also may have. But even then, you are right about the fact that ALAYBOY (or the virtual student per se) wouldn't get to ask their own personal question. The sad fact is that ALAYBOY has such an extreme aversion of unnecessarily drawing attention to himself that he will NEVER ask a question in a public classroom setting, so that angle is a bit null. The same sort of cultivation of social skills in peer-to-peer interaction is also a notable deficit in the virtual experience. Some of the contemporary teaching models (similar to the discussion in the link I posted in my previous response in this thread) actually foster virtual participation via zoom-like participation, but there are also profs that discourage this sort of virtual participation and only want to provide the remote recording (minus any live virtual participation by remote attendees). The teeth of your point holds much more pertinence as the lectures go from these weeding out generic classes that hold hundreds of freshmen, to those more major-specific upper tier courses where individualized and specific instruction is much more conducive to a one-on-one and face-to-face educational model. Teaching and admonishing ALAYBOY to overcome that introverted tendency is an ongoing battle.

 

[sword]

aleshanee:​

You are very right on the definition of curmudgeon, but your input is always welcome here. Besides, to the current college crowd, anyone over 35 is both old and a curmudgeon.