I’ve taught college classes since 2010, but I never graded attendance directly until this year. I thought that students are adults who can make their own choices about where to spend their time, and if they could do well on my tests and assignments without spending much time in class, more power to them.

But I got tired of seeing students miss a lot of class, then fail by getting poor grades on the tests and assignments, or scramble for the last few weeks to avoid failing. Explaining the importance of attendance didn’t seem to help, so I finally turned to the economist’s solution- incentives. This Spring I tried grading attendance in one class, and this successful experiment plus the growth of AI mean I plan to grade attendance in all classes from now on.

The Benefits:

• Get to know student’s names faster
• Students feel rewarded for showing up
• Students show up more, bringing more energy to the room
• Students show up more, so they learn more and do better on other assignments
• Physically showing up is one thing I can be sure the AI isn’t doing for them, it will be a while before humanoid robots are that good

The Costs That Turned Out Not to Be Big Deals

• I thought students would dislike me policing their whereabouts and give me lower course evaluations (which is part of why I waited for tenure to try this). But my Spring evals were at least as high as usual, with none mentioning the attendance policy. When I asked students in a different class about this, most said they wished I would grade attendance if it meant less weight on exams.
• I thought tracking attendance would be burdensome, but it turns out my main course software (Canvas) already has an attendance-tracking tool built in that lets you just click on names in a seating chart each day and enters grades automatically. It is certainly less burdensome than grading most assignments.

I still had some students disappear for a while due to personal issues; sometimes even the strongest grade incentives aren’t enough to get people to class. But overall I can’t believe I waited this long. I’m currently putting attendance as 10-15% of the course grade, but I dream about someday running a discussion-based class like a Liberty Fund seminar, doing a 100% attendance/participation grade, and not having to grade anything.