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University Gives Away iPhones To Curb Truancy
Norsefire writes "A Japanese University is giving away iPhones to its students to use the phones' GPS functionality to catch students who skip classes. The University claims students currently fake attendance by having other students answer for them during rollcall, they also said that while this can be abused by giving other students the phone, they are much less likely to do this due to the personal information, such as email, a phone generally contains."
The article states that attendance at this university is a necessary requirement to graduate:
Truants in Japan often fake attendance by getting friends to answer roll-call or hand in signed attendance cards. That's verging on cheating since attendance is a key requirement for graduation.
Having said that, smart students would probably be able to figure out a way of disabling this 'feature' or spoofing it to show them as being in a different location pretty quickly. Also GPS often fails to get a usable signal in some buildings.
The problem is that in undergraduate courses in Japanese Universities, classes are always a waste of time. Once you've passed the entrance exams, you basically just have to turn up to graduate.
I think that attendance is often mandatory (certainly in tertiary studies that I've done in Australia it has been)
I went to university in Melbourne, and attendance was only mandatory for the practical/lab component of each course; lectures and tutorials were optional (but obviously recommended).
The whole University scene is utterly, utterly different than in the west. It's "optional" in the same sense not being homeless is "optional" in the west - you can do it but you are looked down upon mightily. I wouldn't draw any comparisons to anything you know here.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm an assistant professor at one of the top universities in Japan. Check out my ridiculously-long post above. I forgive you if you skim it. I had a lot to say.
Our professors made their own attendance requirements and put them in the syllabus so the students would know them from the beginning of the semester.
Some classes really should have attendance required, like music ensembles and group lab classes in which others are depending on you. Some foreign language classes required a minimum number of listening lab hours, or even group speaking labs. I had writing classes in which attendance was necessary, despite all the writing assignments being solo projects. I also had philosophy and math classes in which it was optional, despite the discussion being important in philosophy and the examples being very helpful in mathematics.