By now, we all know that we have to certify attendance for our classes at the beginning of each semester. And by now, many of us have gotten those irritating nag-emails about following through — even though we just got a confirmation email saying we certified! A pretty significant subset of those who have received one of those nags has insisted — rightly — that the attendance certification was done on time and blamed getting tagged with the “you didn’t follow through” message on technology — wrongly, it turns out.
First, the bad news: So far as we can tell, there have been no actual technical failures of the system resulting in people who did certify attendance getting tagged and nagged. (That’s a purely empirical question, incidentally, and there’s just no evidence to back up the “technical problem” claim.)
But here’s the less bad news: Let’s say you did certify attendance, and you got a confirmation of your certification, but then in a few days, you got a “you failed” notice anyway: There’s probably a very good, simple explanation — which is why I’m posting today.
Everything about Attendance Certification suggests that the certification is “by the section.” You log in, you go to this or that section, you check off the boxes, you submit for the section, and you get a notice for the section. However, this is all misleading. Attendance Certification is actually a “per student” operation. Yes, students are grouped into sections, but as every classroom professor knows, students come and students go — and it’s students coming into your section after you certified that is the “culprit.”
Here’s a summary of a recent spate of certify-confirmation-tag-and-nag reports: The professor is trying to get ahead of the game. She or he logs in and dutifully certifies attendance, and then verifies that the confirmation email has arrived.. That happy professor goes back to teaching, breathing normally. But next class, a student is added to the section, or perhaps reinstated after a little financial aid problem, or gets placed in the section because of assessment and leveling. That student has not been certified by that happy professor. And guess what: The system sees that uncertified student in that professor’s section, and initiates the tag-and-nag routine. The professor is sad, knows for a fact (for real) that the certification was done, and blames technology (or A&R, etc.).
I hope you’ll forgive me for packaging this in a little cuteness. But the bottom line — the “moral” of the story in this post, if you will — is that Attendance Certification is per student. If you think of it that way, then you’ll remember to certify any “new” students you get. (Or you’ll wait until closer to the deadline, which poses a different risk!)
Now, if you’re one of the smaller subset of professors who just forgot to do it, well. . . . Don’t be. It’s not just a random ACC thing that someone thought up to make your specific life a little more miserable. It’s a real thing. We report these attendance certifications, and things like student financial aid hinges on it. ACC has no choice, for instance, but to send uncertified students letters asking that they pay back financial aid — after all, without the certification, we can’t prove they are going to class. And not certifying has caused all manner of other problems for students.
I well understand the argument that “the state” puts all these burdens on people who already serve society by teaching — I even agree, to a large extent, with this sentiment. However, let me frame it like this: Let’s don’t make our students pay for our protests of these intrusions.
These intrusions and legitimate state interests are a conversation for another day.
Thanks! Visit again soon.
Matthew
