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RFID Checks Student Attendance in Arizona
The student newspaper at UW-Madison is running a piece about the use of RFID to check lecture attendance at Northern Arizona University. One poster to an email discussion list suggested that getting around this system would be simple if "all one has to do is walk into a classroom with 10 RFID-enabled cards in their pocket." "The new system will use sensors to detect students' university identification cards when they enter classrooms, according to NAU spokesperson Tom Bauer. The data will be recorded and available for professors to examine. ... [The spokesman] added the sensors, paid for by federal stimulus money, initially would only be installed in large freshmen and sophomore classes with more than 50 students. NAU Student Body President Kathleen Templin said most students seem to be against the new system. She added students have started Facebook groups and petitions against the sensor system. ... One of the most popular Facebook groups ... has more than 1,400 members." What are the odds that the use of tracking RFID will expand over time on that campus?
Man, I hate taking attendance. As far as I'm concerned, attendance should have nothing to do with assessments in college. Moreover, it's a huge waste of time having to do this paper-shuffling stuff at the beginning of each class session.
However, it's just about the ONE thing that the administration of the college I teach at is totally anal about. They require it, they have an awkward official form that must be filled with checks for every student for every class meeting (can't use my own design, or a spreadsheet, or an online summary), it's the one thing they have a big boldface BY SIGNING HERE YOU VERIFY YOU HAVE CHECKED ATTENDANCE RECORDS FOR ACCURACY.
Why? Because it's how they document financial aid. Most of the students attending are on some form of government financial aid, and if they potentially withdraw or don't show up, the college can point to this roster and say, "See? Student attended class. Pay up, state agency." I'm wasting hours of time every semester with this CYA bullshit -- but to the administration, getting paid trumps all else.
I also recently spearheaded an insurgency against an attempt to make attendance a passing requirement in my department's remedial courses. Fortunately (largely because the department chair is a fellow union member and thus responsive -- administration trying to remove that asap), that one did get knocked down.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
If you have any student loans, universities in the United States are required to report your last date of attendance, if you are attending at least half time or not, and other information to the National Student Loan Data System. This may be an automated way that they are trying to get information for this.
While I imagine universities are not going to rush to using the last date you showed up in class versus the current date for refund and grading (withdrawal with no grade versus withdrawal-failing/withdrawal-pass, etc.), I could easily see universities using this data in the event of a grade dispute or similar issue.
When I taught as a TA, we tracked attendance by hand in TA'd sections. (Not using RFID technology, tracking attendance in lectures was pointless.) It's useful information to the instructor to know whether someone who is doing poorly (or doing well) has good attendance. We also often ran into students who liked to file complaints when they got a grade they didn't like. If you've tracked attendance and they have poor attendance, you can quickly show that their complain has no merit.