Marked on attendance

manlad

Got the results for C.A today and noticed that the majority of the mark went to attendance in lectures. The lecturer never mentioned this at all during the year and there was nothing in the course outline on moodle. I worked really had at this assignment and to find out most of the marks went to attendance I'm pretty annoyed. I attended as often as I could but his lectures were pretty poor and not a great learning environment. I asked him about it and he pretty much told be to F*** off.

Would it be worth going to somebody who is above him?maybe the head of the programme for advice on the matter?

cocoa

Yes, it is worth your while discussing this with your programme chair, ye should have been informed from the start. But don't get your hopes up too much for having the result changed.

Just out of curiosity, didn't anyone ever ask why the attendance was being taken? (for my classes, attendance is almost never taken so it seems a bit weird to me)

manlad

I think lecturers take attendance so if you fail their exam and come back to them complaining about your result they can say well you didn't attend many of my lectures. But in this case the CA had nothing to do with attendance.

redout

It's a sign of the times - I have 4 classes this semester all offering marks towards CA for attendance and had another 3 in the first semester. I will say though I never heard of the majority of marks for CA going to attendance and they usually inform you either in the course outline on moodle or in the opening lecture. It usually tends to be 5/10%.

wonderfulname

What does it say on the module description on your portal page?

manlad

It says nothing about attendance on the portal page, I would have remembered if something was said. I tried to talk about it with him but his response was that I hope you learned a lesson from this. Frustrating stuff especially when I need the result and worked hard at the CA

Nanaki

I agree with it being ridiculous not being told, we hadn't a clear due date from lecturer on a deadline, then were informed it was due in a few days.

I think marks going for attendance is a good thing. Maybe not compulsory attendance, or more than 10%, but it would help motivate students to go.
Definitely for any tutorials/labs, give a small percentage to attendance.

Even if you're daydreaming you might still absorb some useful information.

Kamili

I'm a CA graduate, graduated a good few years ago and I think I know the lecturer you speak of.

When I did CA back then, we were also marked on our attendance which was pretty sucky but thats the way it was.

overshoot

we had a issue in DIT this year (first year where our course ran under the module system) where we were told there were marks for attendance but it turned out under the module system that you cannot mark it. he also said this was the case in some other university where he works or does a course or something or other. its very possible that its a condition of the module system that you can't mark attendance

rigumagoo

You are doing a third level degree in a university.
They probably expect students not to need to be *told* that they have to actually go to their lectures.
If you deliberately missed a lot of your lectures, then you deserve to get low marks, irrespective of what you think of your lecturer's teaching style.

kowloon

Could be worse. I was on a module where the outline stated it was 100% CA. There was an exam which nobody was told about until someone questioned why it had turned up on their timetable.

cocoa

rigumagoo wrote: »

You are doing a third level degree in a university.
They probably expect students not to need to be *told* that they have to actually go to their lectures.
If you deliberately missed a lot of your lectures, then you deserve to get low marks, irrespective of what you think of your lecturer's teaching style.

I am attending a third level degree in university. I expect lecturers to take their jobs seriously and assess me based primarily, if not entirely, on my work and my understanding of topics. If, for some reason that escapes me personally, a lecturer feels that my presence at lectures is a genuine indicator of my own worth or achievement and so uses it as an assessment, I expect them to inform me. If I miss a lot of lectures and learn the material on my own, I expect to be judged on my performance in an exam, or an assignment I submitted, not my choice as a free thinking adult to attend or not attend lectures which are supposed to assist learning, not exclusively contain it.

jennyq

rigumagoo wrote: »

You are doing a third level degree in a university.
They probably expect students not to need to be *told* that they have to actually go to their lectures.
If you deliberately missed a lot of your lectures, then you deserve to get low marks, irrespective of what you think of your lecturer's teaching style.

I think that's a fairly unreasonable justification for it - regardless of whether or not it's attendance, or an assignment, or an exam, students deserve to know what their grades will be based on at the end of a module. In fact, it's stated in the Marks & Standards of DCU in Section 6: Assessment & Module Marks:

"6.1.3 For all assessment components and component elements, the assessment methodology, set of assessment criteria and weightings are provided in advance to students."

If you weren't informed until the end of semester that attendance was marked then I would say your lecturer is in breach of this regulation and you should take the issue up with your programme chair.

Whether or not anyone has an opinion that students are failing in their obligations by not attending all their lectures isn't really relevant (though personally I think that if you don't attend lectures that you should have your results will reflect it, and if they're not affected the lectures probably weren't that important). It's not a requirement by the university and no student should be punished for missing lectures unless it's explicitly stated that a part of the grade depends on attendance.

rigumagoo

cocoa wrote: »

I am attending a third level degree in university. I expect lecturers to take their jobs seriously and assess me based primarily, if not entirely, on my work and my understanding of topics. If, for some reason that escapes me personally, a lecturer feels that my presence at lectures is a genuine indicator of my own worth or achievement and so uses it as an assessment, I expect them to inform me. If I miss a lot of lectures and learn the material on my own, I expect to be judged on my performance in an exam, or an assignment I submitted, not my choice as a free thinking adult to attend or not attend lectures which are supposed to assist learning, not exclusively contain it.

You can fluke an exam and you can plagiarise an assignment (as long as you keep the turnitin under 4%!). The only way your lecturer can know for sure that you have some grasp of the material is if you sit through the lectures and have in-class questions and such.
As for your assertion that lecturers are only there to assist your learning, as if you could easily master the field on your own without cumbersome need of any help from people who are actually experienced in the area, well I think you do have a lot to learn.

jennyq

rigumagoo wrote: »

You can fluke an exam and you can plagiarise an assignment (as long as you keep the turnitin under 4%!). The only way your lecturer can know for sure that you have some grasp of the material is if you sit through the lectures and have in-class questions and such.
As for your assertion that lecturers are only there to assist your learning, as if you could easily master the field on your own without cumbersome need of any help from people who are actually experienced in the area, well I think you do have a lot to learn.

I don't think anyone is arguing against a lecturer's right to base some of their grading on attendance if that's how they feel about it, whether it's true or not - the issue is not informing them of it when it's not the norm and wouldn't be assumed by a student.

cocoa

rigumagoo wrote: »

You can fluke an exam and you can plagiarise an assignment (as long as you keep the turnitin under 4%!). The only way your lecturer can know for sure that you have some grasp of the material is if you sit through the lectures and have in-class questions and such.

I don't mean to cause offence, but in my area, a well crafted exam cannot be fluked, and any case of plagiarism can be very easily spotted by simply talking to the student. I find the idea of a lecturer basing assessment on attendance and in class questions a bit odd, if it's just attendance then, in my opinion, it means nothing and if they're verbal questions it sounds like quite a task to keep track off, never mind being highly subjective. If it's a class test (written), well that's not what I was talking about.

rigumagoo wrote: »

As for your assertion that lecturers are only there to assist your learning, as if you could easily master the field on your own without cumbersome need of any help from people who are actually experienced in the area, well I think you do have a lot to learn.

Once again, in my area, none of the lecturers would dream of claiming that they are the one true source of information. Students are encouraged to do investigations of their own, check other sources, use resources both in textbooks and online and to learn however suits them best. It seems to me this is a basic cultural difference between our two backgrounds, almost any lecturer in my faculty would agree that lectures are optional, and for a good reason.

Pygmalion

rigumagoo wrote: »

You are doing a third level degree in a university.
They probably expect students not to need to be *told* that they have to actually go to their lectures.
If you deliberately missed a lot of your lectures, then you deserve to get low marks, irrespective of what you think of your lecturer's teaching style.

Depends a lot on the circumstances really.
A lot of people (at least in CA, presumably for the rest) have previously worked in the field or done some kind of relevant PLC course or whatever, I wouldn't expect these people to sit through a bunch of introductory lectures.

If you understand the material fine and can do everything that's asked of you it's a bit stupid to lose marks for not dragging yourself out of bed to have the stuff read to you.

MightyMighty737

Fact is from what OP says the lecturer never said in person or on the Module Outline that attendence would go towards the CA grade. Therefore it's unfair that the first time they hear of it was when they got their results.

I'd definitly be bringing it up with my class rep or course tutor if it was me.

phantom_lord

MightyMighty737 wrote: »

Fact is from what OP says the lecturer never said in person or on the Module Outline that attendence would go towards the CA grade. Therefore it's unfair that the first time they hear of it was when they got their results.

Yup, no way that should be acceptable.