The Elephant in the Room – Attendance: The Empty space
Monday, April 7, 2025 2:30 PM - 3:15 PM
ENGAGEMENT
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Session Outline
It has been highlighted by a global survey conducted by Times Higher Education in 2022 that 76% of academics have reported that class attendance is lower compared to pre-pandemic levels. Oldfield, Rodwell, Curry and Marks (2019) and Menendez Alvarez-Hevia, Lord and Naylor (2021) identify factors such as rising mental health problems, financial pressures and personal circumstances impacting students’ decisions to attend lead to academics teaching to half empty spaces. This interactive workshop will address the elephant in the room. Attendance is a global issue within HE and is often associated to key university measures, such as success, employability, and retention (Menendez Alvarez-Heria et al, 2021). The shift in student engagement on campus has practical implications for universities and more understanding to identify the needs of students are required, therefore the effectiveness of normative student engagement measures is challenging (Kirby-Hawkins, 2024).
This session will present the outcomes of a new student engagement system implemented at Manchester Metropolitan University to support personal tutoring. The system is designed to understand student engagement at an individual level; the engagement team identify and triage those students that are more at risk either due to low attendance and/ or engagement or personal circumstances. This data-driven approach means students can be signposted to personal tutors or professional services to access support. Personal tutors can provide targeted pro-active support using transparent data presented via a personalised dashboard, Presto. This has enabled a more tailored approach to personal tutoring throughout the semesters combining data from professional services to try to help students stay on track by providing early intervention. Data from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities evidence improvement in attendance within departments from the previous year, however there is still much to address from the qualitative data regarding reasons for not attending or engaging with face to face sessions.
We will discuss HE attendance policies debating attendance and engagement behaviours, discuss roles and responsibilities of professional services and academic colleagues, and deliberate dashboards for personal tutoring and communications for cultural change regarding attendance. This workshop will be interactive throughout but showcase the lessons learnt from Manchester Metropolitan University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities over the last 12 months of collaborating with student partners, academics/ personal tutors and professional services and our proposed next steps, with an aim to share and develop best practice through knowledge exchange across the sector.
Kirby-Hawkins, H., 2024. Riding the carousel: Examining the intersection of students’ identity and sense of place as factors impacting their attendance and engagement behaviours. Student Engagement in Higher Education Journal, 5(2), pp.92-110.
Menendez Alvarez-Hevia, D., Lord, J. and Naylor, S., 2021. Why don’t they attend? Factors that influence the attendance of HE students of education. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 45(8), pp.1061-1075.
Oldfield, J., Rodwell, J., Curry, L. and Marks, G., 2018. Psychological and demographic predictors of undergraduate non-attendance at university lectures and seminars. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 42(4), pp.509-523.
Learning Outcomes
2. Explore strategies for using attendance and engagement data to offer tailored support through personal tutoring and professional services
3. Explore how collaboration between academic staff, professional services, and students can help address underlying reasons for non-attendance.
Competencies
This session addresses the following competencies of the UKAT Professional Framework for Advising and Tutoring