Oh, yeah, I forgot that you guys have a different system in that regard (should have remembered from when I was meant to be going on exchange)…
You have separate lab classes over there, right? Like, it’s a whole separate subject to the coursework/lecture classes..?
It’s not normally like that over here.
For science, at least, and even some of the humanities subjects I’ve done, tutes, at least, are always mandatory. And I’ve had several with mandatory/graded lecture attendance, too…
At least, that was the case pre-Covid.
But even after Covid, for things like Spanish, Chem and straight maths..? Attendance is defs mandatory.
Though the tradeoff is that some of these (Spanish, for example) don’t have a final, external exam. Which… Doesn’t suit me. But it does some others.
After freshman year (when classes went from 80 in a lecture hall to an actual classroom) every single class I had had attendance worth some portion of your grade, usually to the point where you'd need 100% in everything else to not lose a whole letter off it. Often times with trick questions for the test that wasn't on the notes that you'd only get in lecture that was usually pointed out specifically to note it.
Likely because students with mindsets like yours had become rampant and they wanted to clamp down on it because of how badly it had begun to reflect on them.
The only classes I knew where it wasn't required were from my buddies in majors where the teacher knew you'd fail anyway if you missed them, so they didn't care to track it.
trick questions for the test that wasn't on the notes that you'd only get in lecture that was usually pointed out specifically to note it.
It maybe depends on the subject but this just sounds like you had awful instructors. If there is an "answer" that only shows up in lecture, it's not actually part of the coursework, it's just a way to force attendance. "You can flawlessly solve every type of question covered in this course but you didn't hear the magic word on Thursday so you lose points," is not university-level teaching.
The only place attendance is relevant is labs for obvious reasons. And even then, you could usually find open lab time and do all the work outside of class hours if you needed to.
Well yes, that was the main point of it. They openly admitted to that as I already said. Because otherwise people would just download the powerpoints of the lectures or read the textbook and never attend period sans for the test days.
For an example, most of the time it was a study that you'd not know about because it was only brought up in lecture and end up being asked to discuss its findings relevant to the stuff you could learn from the text itself. Not a simple "writing Shabooopy for 10 points" magic word, but legitimate learning in itself being carrotted to keep you in the class instead of "lul attendance not mandatory, I'm outtie suckers!"
I'll even admit it was effective because I can still recall some of them due to the discussions we had in those lectures. Stuff I'd have missed otherwise because without the forced attendance my stupid youth brain would have ditched constantly.
Something not being "university-level" is the same as all your high school teachers saying "you'll need this in college!" wherein college is twice as lazy and immediately teaches you how to not need that. In theory it shouldn't be, but that's not how they end up working a lot of the time.
Oh, yeah, I forgot that you guys have a different system in that regard (should have remembered from when I was meant to be going on exchange)…
You have separate lab classes over there, right? Like, it’s a whole separate subject to the coursework/lecture classes..?
It’s not normally like that over here.
For science, at least, and even some of the humanities subjects I’ve done, tutes, at least, are always mandatory. And I’ve had several with mandatory/graded lecture attendance, too…
At least, that was the case pre-Covid.
But even after Covid, for things like Spanish, Chem and straight maths..? Attendance is defs mandatory.
Though the tradeoff is that some of these (Spanish, for example) don’t have a final, external exam. Which… Doesn’t suit me. But it does some others.
So eh. Tradeoffs, I guess!
My university had some profs give marks for attendance. Or for "class participation".
It's such a joke.
It was absolutely mandatory in my US university.
After freshman year (when classes went from 80 in a lecture hall to an actual classroom) every single class I had had attendance worth some portion of your grade, usually to the point where you'd need 100% in everything else to not lose a whole letter off it. Often times with trick questions for the test that wasn't on the notes that you'd only get in lecture that was usually pointed out specifically to note it.
Likely because students with mindsets like yours had become rampant and they wanted to clamp down on it because of how badly it had begun to reflect on them.
The only classes I knew where it wasn't required were from my buddies in majors where the teacher knew you'd fail anyway if you missed them, so they didn't care to track it.
It maybe depends on the subject but this just sounds like you had awful instructors. If there is an "answer" that only shows up in lecture, it's not actually part of the coursework, it's just a way to force attendance. "You can flawlessly solve every type of question covered in this course but you didn't hear the magic word on Thursday so you lose points," is not university-level teaching.
The only place attendance is relevant is labs for obvious reasons. And even then, you could usually find open lab time and do all the work outside of class hours if you needed to.
Well yes, that was the main point of it. They openly admitted to that as I already said. Because otherwise people would just download the powerpoints of the lectures or read the textbook and never attend period sans for the test days.
For an example, most of the time it was a study that you'd not know about because it was only brought up in lecture and end up being asked to discuss its findings relevant to the stuff you could learn from the text itself. Not a simple "writing Shabooopy for 10 points" magic word, but legitimate learning in itself being carrotted to keep you in the class instead of "lul attendance not mandatory, I'm outtie suckers!"
I'll even admit it was effective because I can still recall some of them due to the discussions we had in those lectures. Stuff I'd have missed otherwise because without the forced attendance my stupid youth brain would have ditched constantly.
Something not being "university-level" is the same as all your high school teachers saying "you'll need this in college!" wherein college is twice as lazy and immediately teaches you how to not need that. In theory it shouldn't be, but that's not how they end up working a lot of the time.
Hmm, we did that in Theory of Computation, IIRC. Discrete math was all just counting things.