To Attend or Not to Attend: Why Student Attendance Has Dropped Since the Pandemic and What We Can Do About It
Context
The ago-old question of how we define, and measure student engagement has become ever more prevalent as student engagement practitioners struggle to get in-person engagement for any (extra/co-curricular) activities back up to pre-pandemic levels. With many students leading complex lives and having to prioritise work, caring commitments or whether to spend money on a journey to campus instead of food, one of the solutions may have been to move more content into timetabled sessions. After all, embedding ‘x topic’ in the curriculum is often hailed as the holy grail whether it be employability, wellbeing or sustainability. But what if even timetabled sessions don’t hold the same attraction any more despite rigorous attendance policies in place?
Research
This research has been inspired by a sector and local debate relating to decreasing and perceived lower student attendance at in-person timetabled classes at university level education. Across global higher education, there have been several trends emerging in sector forums and on social media, relating to student attendance at in-person classes having significantly decreased post-COVID-19. This same occurrence of lower student attendance has been reported by academic colleagues across UK Higher Education. There are numerous theories from staff suggesting reasons why a decrease in student attendance has occurred post COVID-19, such as a desire to learn online, the current cost of living crisis, and a further increase in poor mental health. Although many of these explanations have substance, none are evidenced through qualitative student data where there is a distinct lack of evidence from these key perspectives.
About a year ago, colleagues at the University of Greenwich/Greenwich Students’ Union, University of Portsmouth/Portsmouth Students’ Union, and Nottingham Trent University/Nottingham Trent Students’ Union embarked on a research project conducting focus groups with elected programme student academic representatives in the autumn 2023 to explore and attain student perspectives on this topic through qualitative data. Our questions included expected attendance requirements, whether they had perceived a drop in attendance since Covid-19 and explanations for this, reasons for prioritising other activities over teaching sessions, the importance of recorded materials to catch up, the rationale for prioritising specific timetabled sessions, and the impact of the cost-of-living-crisis.
Initial Themes
Through the focus groups at all three institutions, we identified some common themes broadly categorised into expectations and pressures, pedagogical reasons and structural barriers.
Unsurprisingly, cost-of-living was a major theme with students highlighting the need of having to choose work over coming to class and making very crude cost-benefit analyses to ensure they earn enough to afford being at university in the first place. The cost of commuting to university could mean no hot meals for the day or clashing with work hours. Students who were not on a student visa also noted that they were not always clear on the attendance expectations, particularly when compared to school.
“So, if you are having to work to afford rent, which I know people are, and food, and your employer sort of says, I need you to work this day, you are not going upset them, you are going to go and work even if you have got a lecture.”
Students also commented on the impact online learning during the pandemic had had on their outlook – some preferred the flexibility of staying at home and catching up with recorded content, others found it difficult to re-engage with the social setting of in-person teaching highlighting the increased mental health challenges many students are facing.
“Honestly, it's hard to get out of bed and get all dressed up, and, you know, look presentable and go. Sometimes you just wish you could just stay there in your own comfort zone and do your own work.”
“I also feel like online teaching did make people not as engaged. If that makes sense. I feel like not a lot of people in my course, are engaged and if we given the opportunity to not go because it's easy or because it's online, people would take the opportunity not to come in.”
When asked how students would prioritise which sessions to attend, the common theme was how engaging the member of staff was. Perhaps surprisingly, it did not matter whether the session was a lecture or discussion-focused seminar/tutorial, both were viewed as valuable if the delivery was engaging, provided space for questions and made the students feel acknowledged. Students also commented on choosing particular sessions for their relevance leading up to assessment deadlines.
Barriers to accessing in-person sessions were also frequently mentioned – whether this was due to the timetable structure and classes being spread out across the week making planning for work and caring commitments very difficult. Or whether it was regarding the content delivery and classroom setting making it more difficult for students with learning disabilities to follow live content.
What’s next
None of these themes are surprising, most of us will have heard them from students regularly. So, what’s next? The cost-of-learning crisis is not going anywhere. The complexities of our students are likely to continue to increase and we are unlikely to see a step change in government support after the General Election. The important financial and other measures universities have put in place to remove barriers and support students will remain vital, and we have written about some ideas on this on the site previously. The new wave of Access and Participation Plans to be published later this year should hopefully also give some inspiration on how we can tackle these challenges.
There is of course the logistical challenge of timetabling. Some institutions have moved to block teaching as a solution enabling students to have all their teaching on 1-2 days and providing planning security to schedule work, caring arrangements etc. However, this also comes with its challenges having to change how assessments are delivered, thinking about how content is delivered concurrently or in a linear way, and putting an even stronger emphasis on how quickly staff can build a strong relationship with their cohort if they only teach them for 7-8 weeks.
The key message from the focus groups that stood out to us was that it is all about the teaching staff and whether they are personable, engaging and can build a connection in the classroom with the students. Students are no different to staff – nobody likes spending their working day in endless meetings with no meaningful contributions or outcomes. So, it shouldn’t be surprising to us that students want to make the best use of their time and be in a space where the conversation is thought-provoking, they feel valued, empowered to contribute and walk away with the feeling that they have learned something new.
Using attendance and engagement analytics data can be a powerful tool to understand where students are voting with their feet and whether certain modules or sessions are particularly affected by low attendance. Correlating this data with module feedback surveys and student representative feedback allows to start building a fuller picture and be the start of – at times undoubtedly difficult – conversations with the respective teaching staff about the potential reasons and solutions.
With Generation Alpha walking through our doors in the next decade, perhaps it’s time for a more radical rethink of how we deliver our curriculum, how students want to ‘consume’ and engage with knowledge and how we can bring Professional Services into that conversation, so our curricula are truly co-created by academics, Professional Services, employers and students/alumni. We need to find new ways of making interactions in the classroom count and meaningful for us and our students.
This research project is a collaboration with Conor Naughton, Jess Walker, Phil Kynaston (Nottingham Trent University & Students’ Union), Tom Lowe, and Rebecca Adams (University of Portsmouth & Students’ Union).
