Attendance Grades? Essay Example

It is acceptable for professors to base part of a student’s grade on attendance and class participation and not solely on student exams and papers. In my experience, I always come out well with a teacher’s policy of doing this, because I do not cut class. I have observed that the students who miss class are the ones who do not do as well overall on grades as the ones who do. The literature surrounding this topic supports my impressions.

There is a correlation between having good attendance and making good course grades whether or not a course grade is attached to it. Shimoff and Catania (2001) conducted a study that simply required students to sign in for each class while an identical class did not. The results were significant that the class that signed in had much higher grades than the one that did not sign in upon entering class.

Assigning grade value to participation also aids processes of active learning. Teachers who have participation as a class grade are sending the message to students that just showing up for class, though important, is not enough. Participation makes students a part of the learning process. It also keeps the teacher from being the “sage on the stage” instead of the “guide on the side” (King 30). While frequent student participation through online, asynchronous environment learning has not produced increase student performance grades, those who participate infrequently tend to be the only ones who fail the classes (Davies & Graff 657).

Works Cited

Davies, Jo and Martin Graff. “Performance in e-learning: Online Participation and Student Grades. British Journal of Educational Technology 36, 4 (2005): 657-663.

King, Alison. “From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side.” College Teaching 41, 1 (1993): 30-35.

Shimoff, Eliot, and Charles A. Catania. “Effects of Recording Attendance on Grades in Introductory Psychology. Teaching of Psychology 28, 3 (2001): 192-195.