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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?
Come on now. These are adults. If they choose to skip class because they feel their time is better spent elsewhere, that's their business. If they're wrong, they'll be punished at exam time. No attendance checks are necessary.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
This comes from a scarcity, closed-system mentality: log and track access. Mostly people who still think this way have not been shown better ways.
They could have done it open: used the resources to video record the classes, and broadcast them on campus (They did this at Stanford when I was there). Students, if they find value in being in the classroom would go, otherwise they could watch the recorded version. Benefits for the students are time shifting, taking breaks as needed, and 1.5x speed playback are obvious examples. For the university, recordings create tools for distance learning, and open education initiatives. For everyone, building a more open approach builds goodwill, and can be used for dramatic marketing and PR advantage.
The whole essence of education works better when the student originates the driving motivation to learn. Putting in place systems that force learning on someone (for example, tracking attendance) while may seem to improve results short term, actually reduce success long term for the person.
At the college level...why bother? Seriously. These kids are paying for the privilege of being there, so if they want to sleep through or skip class, who is the school to say they shouldn't?
They get paid either way.
Sent from your iPad.
I could understand doing this for primary and secondary schools, but for a university?
Who cares if the consumer does not show up to receive the service he paid for?
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
1) Lobby for this in your state
2) Go back to college, target ones with huge classes and this RFID attendance checking system
3) Advertise that, for a small fee, you'll gladly take people's cards with you to class. Once you get to class, take a nap
???
Profit!
In my classes, they didn't care if you showed up or not, you already paid your tuition. If you fail out, thats your problem and your lost cash.
I don't see why I would necessarily have to go to class if I knew the material. And I didn't always go to class when I knew what its about. Using VB to talk to Oracle? Boring. Anyways, I wasn't graded on my attendance, and neither should any university student. They talk about how its their job to prepare people for the working world, when its not. It's their job to educate you on the skills you need to work in the field, your work ethics are an entirely seperate subject they should not have a part in, unless you want to go to a class dedicated to that.
I dunno, I could see this working for elementary school, but not University.
This seems to be a completely opposite approach than on my school where one can unlock classrooms (that have not been blocked by priviledged cards) with ANY card from an unrelated issuer (of course with the same standard)
The use of rf clickers like the interwrite prs makes this old news. Some profs already use the "clickers" for attendance as well as for in-class participation. Most use it to give students a chance for extra credit and to get feedback from students. Off course at the end of the semester it all comes down to just getting the grade (sadly). Personally, students should be treated as if they were adults. They should be able to decide if they will go to class. I do not understand why these profs want to force people to go to their class when they do not want to go. It is better to have students who want to be there.
How is ordering RFID-backed ID card blanks putting federal cash to work on "shovel-ready" projects?
Let me guess....campus maintenance staff would've been fired over the summer if they didn't need to set up card readers at the door to a few classrooms? Does anybody believe this stuff anymore?
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."
They obviously need body-scanners to detect this sort of foul play.
I volunteer to watch the scanner to make sure no hot coeds try this.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Seems like they have been reading Cory Doctorow`s little brother and got loads of great ideas from it.
all one has to do is walk into a classroom with 10 RFID-enabled cards in their pocket.
Not so easy...
Step 1. Threaten each student with expulsion if they try to defeat the system.
Step 2. Install a turnstile to make sure people enter at the optimum rate (maybe not even necessary)
Step 3. Set the scanner up to sound alarm and flash a light like it's walmart if it ever detects multiple cards at once. (thresholds adjustable)
Problem solved.
As a student, yes, I would hate that I would actually have to attend that class. Yes, I'm paying for it, so why shouldn't I come and go as I please.
And as a school, yes I have the responsibility to vouch that said student did actually come to the classes they claim they did when they show you that way overpriced framed piece of paper. Otherwise, I'm not better than some 2bit school selling degrees.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Sign up for my Facebook group, we're protesting this invasion of our privacy!!
(good god, I hope at least some of the older slashdot denizens see the irony in it)
With many students being denied entry into a particular college/university/etc. because they are at their supposed maximum capacity.. I, for one, would think it entirely that college/university's business to say "If you're not going to attend, gtfo - we'd rather have somebody who does." as a deterrent to future students who plan on low/no attendance.
I bet the kids who are petitioning are having their parents pay for their education. Anybody who pays that amount for an education is going to get their money's worth and sit in a class whether they like it or not.
This system was already in place ten years ago at the school I went to, only it was a barcode on your ID and not an RFID chip. It was used to track attendance to chapel and linked to your cafeteria account (assuming you had one).
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
That's not true, exams are required. They make the difference between attended university and graduated from university.
I truly despise mandatory attendance. It forces students who don't want to be there to attend (remember the distracting assholes in K-12?). It punishes students who actually contribute when they are there, while others who do not contribute merely have to BE THERE. It is often used by professors who give boring lectures. As students, we should be allowed to manage our own time. I'm considering going into education (college level) and if I do, I will NEVER do this crap.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
Yes, but we're talking about an American university here.
American universities aren't exactly places of learning, like they are in Europe and elsewhere. They're more like businesses in many ways. Students pay them huge sums of money, and in return they expect a piece of paper saying they've got certain "qualifications".
The actual learning part isn't really a priority for many students. They pay, they perform the minimum amount of work necessary, and expect to pass, even if they haven't actually learned the material or earned the qualifications that they seek. This is especially true for students who went through Bush's "No Child Left Behind" system, where failure is unheard of, even when students had absolutely no grasp of the material in question.
When professors do fail these students, the end result is often legal action against the university. Claims of "discrimination" are thrown against the university and the professors, and regardless of the outcome, the university ends up dealing with some bad publicity and legal costs. So it makes sense why they'd try to cover their asses, and at least have something to show the courts to indicate that the students in question didn't even bother to try to learn the material.
Why waste money on this fancy RFID tracking system, like tracking cattle? If you want to force the hungover frat guys into class, hit em' where it really hurts, the grade book...
Test often and test hard, if they don't show up they won't pass. No "2bit school selling degrees" would do something like that. Also, build each class curriculum with detailed lectures that cover material that isn't found in the book. If they don't show up to class, they miss key points that are on tests. Or, they have to pay through the nose for lecture notes and study them.
Come on now. These are adults. If they don't learn anything because they feel their time is better spent elsewhere, that's their business. If they're wrong, they'll be punished in their careers. No exams are necessary.
I'm sure sarcasm was intended, but this is often the truth. I don't place any value grades, exams, or school projects when hiring interns or fresh college hires (although I can't prevent HR from using that as a screening mechanism). Either you know how to code or you don't, and it doesn't take much to figure out which. No amount of success at exams will get you a job with me, only actual learning.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I thought the point of post-secondary education was that attendance is optional, knowledge of course content is required, and verified by examination. Some of my profs were among the most brilliant people I've ever met. Sadly, a number of them had the personality and teaching skill of a venomous reptile. Forcing students into regular contact with them would have been regarded as a war crime in any civilized country on Earth.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Surely it is easier and cheaper for the teacher to spend 10 minutes taking a roll call? Not to mention, less room for cheating the system. Human interaction is a pretty definate way of confirming wether someone is there or not.
just put a rfid tag clipped to their ear, like cattle.
Some lecturers in my uni monitored student attendance and told that students who do no attend xx% of lectures would fail exam. Results? Noisy lectures where you can't hear lecturer talking, lots of distractions. So.. Yeah, it's a bad idea.
Why not test "knowledge of subject matter" to check attendance?
I know most undergrad students still act like children, but the whole point of university is that that's where you start treating them like adults.
sic transit gloria mundi
I'm concerned about any university that uses classroom attendance as a means of estimating whether or not they're learning the presented material.
Due to tag collisions, a bag full of tags probably won't work. The rfid readers I've used require some time and space between tags to reset. You'd be able to stand there and scan one tag after another, but that would be a bit obvious.
Less to the point, college attendance is something that sorts itself out come grade time. Why bother tracking it?
I would refuse to give my business to a school that attempted this, and if I were already attending a school that adopted this policy, I would refuse to carry anything with an RFID tag in it to any classes I attended.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
some kind of prototype for national id/passports cards we'll all need soon? this is arizona, after all.
How about all the students microwave their ID cards for 5 seconds destroying the RFID chip? When the attendance for every class reads 0 they will get the message.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the rather obvious problem of people being held accountable for the 100% accurate function of technology that is outside of their control, or possibly even feedback.
Imagine being told at the end of term that you missed too many classes, when in fact you attended every one. All due to your RFID card being defective, broken, accidentally shielded, or other malfunction.
Note that the article said "using sensors to detect students cards", which implies a passive scan, rather than an active swipe. The fact that journalism is a dead art form and you can't trust a person to write a story using words that actually convey the facts of the situation COULD be misleading in this case.
at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. I've had my attendance checked in first year classes. We had these small remote "clickers" that we used to answer multiple choice questions on tests. At the beginning of each class the prof would give us all a minute to sign in with our clickers. As the summary says, it's pretty easy to get a friend to sign in for you... and answer your test questions.
I learn a lot from lectures. Others people don't. Requiring attendance is one way of forcing students to conform to a learning style that may or may not work for them.
Mandatory lectures, mandatory reading, mandatory practice problems, mandatory study groups.... By the time you get to college, you should already know how to learn.
To really make a profit, target the party schools. The day after St. Patricks Day will see the biggest profit windfall!
How about just installing a jammer in the classrooms to defeat this? We are talking about less than a watt and about $100.
The professors would be stuck either with checking IDs, passing an attendance sheet (I used to sign in my friends who were off working to pay for school...easy defeat), or just forgetting it and going back to square one.
Its the RFID boogeyman! They're going to read my thoughts from space! Seems here the gripe should be about attendance, not about the method of attendance. But hey, if its RFID it must be bad!
I am very happy that only the really interested students come in, and I do not have to handle masses of students that do not want to be there.
No worries, I'm sure that with their new laws, they'll only use this technology on those pupils who don't look "white enough"
Ze Atomic Device! It iz Ztolen!
Wrap your card in tinfoil and keep it in your pocket and go to class.
Then ask to see the attendance record immediately after class, before leaving the class. Because you are worried about the attendance being correctly recorded.
You will not be on the list. Just pull out the card to prove it was on your person.
System proven to fail. Go on record as protesting the failure of the attendance system to accurately record your presence.
For bonus points:
Then have everyone bug the system every time after every class to confirm their attendance, so they don't get deducted by the system for not being present.
Given the recent immigration law passed in Arizona, I wouldn't be surprised to see this used to check if foreign students are actively attending... Hyperbolic? Sure, but it's Arizona. :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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
Or, they turn around and blame the professor (and the school) for failing to teach them. And ask for their money back. If the school can demonstrate, that they have not attended the classes, they can defend themselves.
Well, if the school has a written money-back guarantee, then it probably should give them their money back.
Last time I checked, though, no serious educational institution worth attending had such a policy. Who would take a guaranteed-passing-or-your-money-back degree seriously? You pay tuition for the privilege of attending, whether or not you make the grade. If you flunk, you come back next semester, or you transfer, or you go see if Macy's is hiring. Schools don't have to defend themselves against whining, they just show you the door.
while may seem to improve results short term, actually reduce success long term for the person.
Trouble is the school doesn't have to care about the long term effects on their students.
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.
There are two larger issues at here. Before trying to track people's attendance, why don't we look at why they aren't coming to class? 1) The subject they are taking is not very important to their studies. This is very true at liberal arts schools, but most universities have requirements of some sort. I can honestly say there were classes in college that I took that have not used and will never use. Having to take an intro physics course doesn't help me personally, because if I ever need to know physics I'll research it at the time I need it (which is likely never to come). 2) The professor is not a good teacher. This can either be because his/her class is insanely easy or because its frankly just more interesting to research the subjects on your own. There will likely always be students who skip class just because they aren't good students. But I imagine solving the two above would cut down on the majority of problems. In the end, forcing a student into a class that isn't worth their time ends up creating a bunch of students who don't know how to judge what is useful and not (i.e. students who turn into corporate employees that hold pointless meetings just because it is on their calendar).
Exactly. Exams tell you very little about real learning. If your goal is to get students to have a bunch of facts and techniques memorized for the duration of an exam, then by all means, examine away. There's even a fair chance that a few of those things will persist more than a week after the exam. But if you want real, useful* learning, you have to do more than dish up fact and then test regurgitation.
* In a day and age with Google and smart phones, memorizing facts has limited use in the world.
John Doe and Richard Roe are both in class. BOFH burgles their dorm. Meh.
All your database are belong to U.S.
Students who don't attend class fall in one of these categories:
So if I were a prof, I'd take attendance just for a paper trail. Then I'd set some rules like "If your attendance is below X%, then my office hours are not for you; they are for responsible students who made an effort already. If your attendance is below X%, I will likely not call on you during class because it is likely that everyone else in the room already knows the answer to your question."
That way the people who can learn and pass on their own can still do it that way, but the entitled students who think the professor and everyone else in class should work on their schedule get shut out.
I think we are all missing the point: a Facebook petition has been started and it now has over 1,400 members. That is one thousand four hundred people who invested the time and effort into a) creating and/or logging into their Facebook account and b) clicking on a link. The people have spoken, guys. Disregard the fact that over 21,000 students attend NAU and that the Facebook petition to "Remake Full House with a new cast except for Bob Saget he is AMAZING" has more than 1,400 members.
In college, I've been in exactly one class that took attendance. It was Art and Design 101, a 200+ lecture that fulfilled a humanity requirement. The only reason, the prof even said, why she took attendance. No one would show up otherwise.
Compare this to CS 101, where by the end of the semester 15 people would regularly attend lecture, and 150 would attend the exams.
Stupid university practices that are draconian like this piss me off. When I was last attending class, I did the math one semester, and figured that for my tuition and feeds, every time I skipped a class I basically was throwing away 50 dollars. really helped my attendance to the early morning boring classes. Regardless, this is just the spread of the "the school is your mommy" doctrine way too many schools have adopted. I went to high school in a hick town full of Mormons (no offense to any on /.), but one thing it really had going for it was a freedom that when I talk to family member who went to schools with metal detectors I can't imagine ever sending a kid to a school in such an environment. On top of that, the (longstanding) trend is for universities to become more and more entwined with the local businesses, who make up ridiculous proposals so they can make a buck, and then the Uni gets to justify more spending next year, all the while shifting the bill to students for services they don't use, need or want most of the time. When researching tuition for my unnamed Texas uni, I found that tuition basically doubled every 5 years, and that the "& fees" part almost tripled, not to mention the horribly overpriced and monopolized industry of book selling. What we need is more Open Source education styles. /rant off
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
On the other hand. Getting good marks in school signifies that you can learn how to do something that is extremely boring, even when you don't want to do it, in a limited amount of time. This has great value in the work place. Not everything you do at work is fun and/or interesting. It's advantageous to have employees and co-workers who can just bite the bullet and learn something really fast, and get the job done, even if it's not so exciting. In general, you want to keep the work interesting, but you still want people who can work hard when it isn't.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
If your lectures are so bad you have to force students to attend, then maybe you should spend more time honing your teaching skills and less time on the Draconian tracking systems.
Ever notice how certain professors on campus have to turn floods of students away each semester?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
"Can't" should have been "Shouldn't."
If I'm paying the bills, or putting my credit rating on the line, I get to see the grades.
If not, then I didn't have a reason to ask.
Scan campus wide looking for groups of RFIDs that haven't moved in several hours. That's where the good spleef is.
Have gnu, will travel.
Actually, it generally shows you can cram. It's not the same as real learning. I've seen plenty of students who could ace an exam and still couldn't apply a thing they'd learned in a real situation (even in a lab).
Real world situations mean having to actually use what your know, not simply rattle off facts back to someone. That's a skill you can learn (and should learn) in college, but most exams don't teach that at all.
No problem.
I'll just tape my ID to my tape recorder.
Security, tracking and recording is one of these things that many people have a base assumption that more is always better. That's not true at all.
There's the inevitable escalation. As the new system settles in, those charged with security look for new measures to improve monitoring and the new system makes still more measures practical. As the new system becomes normalised, there is less resistance to the next step (when a few years ago the measure would have been widely considered draconian). For example, continually tracking students as they move around campus. They already know what lecture room you're in so who cares right?
The more automated monitoring there is, the less non-automated monitoring there is. You're now just relying on one thing instead of something else. Something that once you may have reported as suspicious you now feel excused from reporting since probably the automated security would have picked it up, right?
This can become much worse when other controls start relying on the automated systems. For example, with the RFID system there's no need to do a headcount anymore, right? So what happens when the log shows 50 people entering the hall and there's only 45 at the assembly point after the fire alarm goes off? True, 50 are recorded as leaving the hall, but oopsie we're recording who's in the hall not who's in the building. Now you're fucked, because there's either a student needing rescuing or a janitor/fireman risking his life unnecessarily. Shit, the best case scenario is actually that students are needing to be rescued and you are able to find them fast - no other possibility allows you certainty.
On the more educational issues of "voluntary" attendance, university is good for people because it teaches responsibility. Taking care of yourself, living on a budget, dealing with the social environment, taking responsibility for your studies, these are all part of the university experience and arguably the most important and valuable part of the whole thing. Secondly, why is a degree valuable to employers? It suggests a base knowledge of the topic, true. But why is it so common for people to be able to do completely unrelated jobs off the back of "a degree"? Because it also implies you have at least the minimum level of intelligence and that you were sufficiently self-motivated. Start mandating and enforcing attendance and degrees actually tell employers less about what they want to know.
Gee I am glad that the federal stimulus money isn't being spent on ridicules systems that have no use and are easily defeated. Oh wait what?
"It is no longer necessary to write new stories about Facebook privacy issues; just change the dates."
http://twitter.com/FakeAPStylebook/status/13363923255
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
on one hand, these are supposed to be "adults" and learning responsibilities, so you fail to show up at class you fail to learn you fail the exams, you fail! and go back home and explain it to mommy & daddy
on the other hand, a majority of these students are using gov't backed loans and/or grants, so as a taxpayer I want the most out of my money, which means show up and learn, I'm not paying for you to slack off.
on yet another hand, I think there is too much emphasis on higher education, and not enough of technical schools...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
if they are in remedial, they are obviously not the most committed of students, and when it comes to lack of commitment to your studies, simple discipline, such as attendance, is often the best, and only, weapon you have against that student drifting completely away
is it that they've already given up, they aren't attending, and remedial courses are a joke?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Can't students claim religious exemption?
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
It looks as if Arizona is really on a roll with human rights and privacy right now.
Well, you know how sometimes students will visit different lectures and swap notes? I predict a growing market for carrying your fellow student's RFID chips with you. Pretty soon they're going to have auditoriums empty but for a single student, even though the lecture was attended by the entire university, as the records will confirm. :P
Between endowment losses, reductions in state funding, and student financial hardship, almost every college in the nation is facing short-term financial trouble.
The school I teach at can't even afford security keycard systems for our new building... how on Earth can any college justify paying for RFID logging for every classroom on campus?
How, precisely, do you 'support the troops'? Do you support them in that you hope they will come back alive? Do you support them in re-integrating into civilian life after discharge? Do you support them by hoping they win their battles? Do you support them in hoping they succeed in their mission?
Although different people would stress different items from your list, a straightforward person would list all of the above.
So by your own words, a straighforward reading of 'support our troops' implies supporting the mission. And you're confused why someone would want to say 'support the troops without supporting the mission'?
If you support the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq, say so. Don't use phrases that confuse concern for the welfare of solders & servicemen with approval of foreign wars.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
I think most of you are looking at this from the wrong angle, you are looking at it from how it affects the students when you should be looking at it from a school administration point of view. Their job is to create a successful school, one that graduates a high percentages of it's students. Giving a "we don't give a shit if you show up or not, it's your loss" attitude towards students is not going to help create a successful school, now is it? I wouldn't doubt that the students who attend class do much better than those who do not. From what I gather, the whole point is to create successful students which will give the school a better reputation... everyone wins. If higher attendance correlates with higher pass rates, then of course they want to motivate students to come to class (and it doesn't have to be positive motivation).
IANAL, but I think that's only possible if your kid goes to college before he/she turns 18 and is still a minor, but at 18 your rights to that information end. Your kid can probably request that you have access to their grades, but you can't demand it from the school without their consent. And it's probably just easier to ask your kid for the grades.
Access to information about an adult should only be granted by that same adult. You can't get the police to send you any speeding tickets they might get, you can't get a hospital to send you a transcript of the blood workup they had done at their physical, and you can't get their school to send you their grades. Unless, of course, you get power of attorney or there is some special circumstance (severe injury, mental retardation, etc) that makes you their legal guardian.
If you, as the parent, are paying the bills, you are well within your rights to ask your kid for those grades. If they refuse, you can tell them that the next semester is theirs to pay for, and good luck, and don't let the door hit them on the ass on the way out. But you can't expect the world to report their activities to you any more. They's all growed up now, and responsible for theyselves. And they have a legal right to privacy. Even from you.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
I've got a novel idea... If you don't like the policies of the University, go somewhere else. Oh wait... sorry I forgot we're talking about people who probably also expect a job where they don't do jack shit when they do finally graduate.
the sensors, paid for by federal stimulus money, initially would only be installed in large freshmen and sophomore
Also, support or not support (the troops + their mission) is not entirely correlated with supporting or not supporting the country that's sending them out.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
What point are you trying to make? There are only two American universities in the top 10, Harvard and Yale. Of the remaining eight, four of them are in the UK, one is in Japan, one is in France, and two are in Germany.
There are only two more American universities in the next 20, the University of Chicago and MIT. Of those remaining eight, one is in Hong Kong, two are in Japan, two are in Australia, one more is in Germany, one is in Switzerland, and one is in Italy.
So there are exactly 4 American universities in the top 20. That's pretty unremarkable, given the stature of the US.
As a Northern Arizona Alumnus, I am TOTALLY EMBARRASSED by this. Federal money wasted on this? Attendance isn't a problem on its own. If your lectures suck, and you can pass a class without them, the student should be rewarded with additional free time. If a lecture adds value to a student, they are there. It's an ultra-simple problem. As someone who saw firsthand how that school works, I can assure you this isn't even as bad at NAU as some other state schools with the 500+ auditoriums. That's actually rare at NAU, and yet attendance will magically help? No. What will help is working with the kids on a better curriculum in their first year. What will help is to stop the madness of 1-year full rides from the reservations that all too often crash in alcoholism and a free 6 month vacation before going back and finding themselves in a nasty cycle of government dependence. At some point, you have to give students a REASON to show up. If that's simply an instructor without a thick accent, so be it. If it's a prof who thinks he or she is funny, so be it. I learned more from classes at NAU that were taught by part-time staffers than anyone up there that was a full-time professor. Start looking inward before blaming your CUSTOMERS, NAU. I am ashamed. -Finance, May 2000
The difference is that in university they foot the bill, on the job their employer does. Even if it's only a few days to find out the guy's a dud that's still money wasted on him.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Arizona is the best test-platform for ultra right-wing policies.
It's a shame we have to play them out in our public space...damn our (very weak) press.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
I've seen quite a difference between knowing how to code and knowing computer science, a self-learner rarely knows the non-coding parts of computer science and ends up stumped when they come up.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I can't blame them for doing what they have to once they get in. However, shouldn't they be aware, at least roughly speaking, that such things will happen when they are making that enlistment decision? That decision, not what they do afterwards, is what I'm questioning.
People misinformed about war pre-enlistment, or people who 'have to' enlist (for economic reasons?) amounts to an interesting and important discussion, but it isn't my core concept.
And I admit this is one of those things that outside people, including myself, just can't fully understand.
It's not something I'd ever do, for a myriad of reasons, so I admit that makes it hard to understand why someone else *would*; that could be broadened to a general concept.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
The way I see it, there are two possibilities for students who do not attend classes:
1. They pass the class anyway. Either because they know the material, they study on their own, they get lucky -- whatever. In this case, why should a student who passes a class instead be failed because they did so without attending many of the lectures? Personally I'd rather applaud students who can effectively learn on their own. It's an extremely valuable trait.
2. The student fails because, well, he doesn't know the material. In which case his attendance is not the factor that determines whether he should pass or fail; it is his performance.
What you're talking about really gets into the purpose of instructors. In my mind, especially at the college level, it is not their job to motivate anybody into passing his/her classes. The students (or their parents) are paying a lot of money to attend. If that isn't motivation enough, well, so be it. These are probably students who never should have been there to begin with, at least not until they sorted other aspects of their life out.
People are entitled to feel differently, but to me the entire idea of trying to force people to care about something that they obviously don't is counterproductive. Instead of spending the first 5-10 minutes of class (especially if you have to sign as to validity!) trying to bully people who don't want to be there into attending, how about instructors use the suddenly lower class size to spend more time with students who actually want their help?
getting around this system would be simple if "all one has to do is walk into a classroom with a RFID-enabled card in their pocket wrapped in aluminum foil.
FTFY. Even if it wasn't used for tracking I would keep any RFID-enabled cards it in a foil-lined wallet, if I didn't nuke it to begin with.
Tanto nomini nullum par elogium.
That's because cramming can stick things in your mind for the midterm but not longterm. I learned this the hard way in several classes, most recently when I crammed for a test (not final), got a 97%, and despite that, going towards the final exam, I could literally remember next to nothing about that section on the review sheet handed out and wouldn't have been able to do the problems if asked. Granted, this was a math class, not my most favorite subject.
I think it has to do with the amount of times you retrieve it (once during exam) vs steady learning with homework and the like where you are constantly recalling the information. Like a marathon runner, it's always best to challenge yourself but pace things out.
Exactly, but what if you don't support the "troops"? What if you pity them for not using their critical thinking skills? What if your ashamed of their presence in the middle east? What if you consider them to be an expensive burden on the state? You might have any kind of interpretation of the value of the "troops", and should in turn speak your mind freely, not feel bound to spit out other peoples words. There is nothing more cowardly than people who feign offence just to stifle debate.
Well, if the school has a written money-back guarantee, then it probably should give them their money back.
Last time I checked, though, no serious educational institution worth attending had such a policy. Who would take a guaranteed-passing-or-your-money-back degree seriously? You pay tuition for the privilege of attending, whether or not you make the grade. If you flunk, you come back next semester, or you transfer, or you go see if Macy's is hiring. Schools don't have to defend themselves against whining, they just show you the door.
Great point. Indeed I had a series of terrible professors in college. I honestly believe that their terrible teaching caused me to fail. However, I wouldn't say that it's exactly unfair that I had them -- many in that class had the same professor and they passed, so what exactly would be my cause to sue?
Let's pretend that most of the class failed anyway, and most of this prof's classes fail year-after-year-after-year -- what will happen? Yeah, nothing. You've seen it. I've seen it. There are terrible professors and they get away with it regardless of whether people complain.
Your argument is extremely critical because tracking student attendance for "warranty" purposes is really the only valid business reason for tracking student attendance. Since there is no pedagogical reason, the only other reason can by voyeurism.
Just because I leave my student ID at home doesn't mean I didn't come to class.
It is, quite frankly, not clear to me what a prof would do with this data, but if he were to say, adjust the grades of attending students upward, is he likely to adjust for false negatives -- that is, students who come but don't bring their IDs.
Most people seem to be missing the point. It's not about attendance. It's about tracking.
Who is a common source of funding for the Universities in the USoA? It's the Govt.
So you don't think there is some overt infuence being exerted to get the RFID system in place by the Govt. Of course the arguments are about attendance and quality of education, but that is to defect from the real goal. It's to get the sheeple used to being tracked everywhere they go.
Next:- "We have RFID tags in large office buildings, to protect us or track work attendance". Real reason, get us used to more intrusions.
Next:- Well introduce RFID into Supermarkets, shopping malls, restaurants to protect us from the terrorists and help stop crime". Real reason, numb us more.
Next:- Well introduce RFID into you homes and cars, because we don't care by now". Result. "Papers please" and there's no way out..
This is the brave new world of the information age that is waiting for us, paid for and owned by the multinational coorporations. But I'll think I'll move back into my cave.
Whether or not it's right to take attendance is a separate question from whether adding RFID tracking to the academic relationship helps or hurts the special university atmosphere which I think most students, professors, and outsiders value highly.
It's not clear from the post whether professors are using the information or casually glancing at it, therefore if I were at this university I'd start by making that clear: I'd wrap my ID in tinfoil, encourage others to do the same, and then brace for a confrontation.
The next step is maybe, ``if you think class participation is important maybe it is not right to teach us in these enormous classes that are too big to count everyone.''
I just don't care about either one too much though. Unfortunately most students at large universities already have their locations tracked by ID cards and retained in a central database for months, with no clear policy on what the data can be used for or controls on who has access to it. I saw it abused a couple times when I was at Uni: ex., guy's friends feed into each others' hysteria. Case A: 1. ``OMG OMG he's missing i haven't seen him in HOURS! / He always sits under that tree for lunch / oh know what happened'' 2. student foodservice employee disappears for a while, 3. ``he bought a pretzel in the north dorms 2 hours ago so he's probably fine.'' Case B: 1. residence halls force student to use ID card to access his room and various areas within his dorm i.e., his ``castle'', 2. residence halls hand informatino over to on-campus police who use it against the student.
If ubiquitous tracking by big brother organizations is the issue, it's a little late---that trend is a disaster on most large campuses. But it usually only affected student's private lives, not their academic ones, until now. I think the private consequences are worse, but I guess these consequences are newer.
There are certainly privacy concerns, but discussion of these tends to dismiss possible benefits of this sort of thing. I believe an appropriate balance here would be a system that accepted RFID hit as indicative of someone's presence, but did not count a lack of an RFID hit as proof of absence. That way people who object to the system could leave their IDs, wrap them in foil, or otherwise not use or disable the function.
What are the odds that the use of tracking RFID will expand over time on that campus?
What are the odds that the proponents of this use of RFID will develop an obsession with looking for Kyle?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Certainly, not every student is going to make it.
But if it takes an electronic leash to fill your classroom, you're doing it wrong. :-)
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
"federal stimulus money"?!
They're spending stimulus money for the digital equivalent of "Bueller....Bueller" ??
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I went to University here in Australia and I didnt attend lectures in some cases. Neither the university or the course coordinator cared that I didnt attend lectures (or labs for that matter). But I still learned the material (downloading lecture notes, reading textbooks etc) AND I passed tests and exams.
And I have a computer science degree sitting on my wall to show for it. (its just that employers would rather hire the guy who has been working in commercial software development with .NET or J2EE or Oracle or C# or ASP or whatever technology they are using vs the guy with really good skills but no real-world experience)
As a Northern Arizona University sophomore studying Computer Information Systems, I am against this.
I've always taken it upon myself to research technologies and other such tools in the Computer/Network Administration field. I've taken 4 CIS classes and 2 CS classes and have yet to find one that has challenged me. Tomorrow I'll be taking a CIS310 (Database Design, Implementation, and Management) final. I haven't been to a full class since the first day and I've gotten A's on all the tests. Why? Because I took it upon myself to learn SQL and the "right way" to do things years ago.
In High School the whole idea of college was the fact that it was up to you and only you to keep track of your homework, get to class, etc. The professors supposedly didn't care. Unlike K-12 which is a state requirement, University and Community College is optional. If you want to pay tuition and enroll in classes, the institution shouldn't care whether or not you show up, just make sure that if you do want to show up, you're able to learn. I manage my own small hosting company and program in C# regularly. Should I REALLY be required to attend CS120 every day where I can learn how to use Microsoft Word?
Professors tend to treat their students as if they're clueless, and to be honest a lot are. The smarter students that take initiative shouldn't have to suffer and be required to go to class because a few clueless slackers can't piece together a basic SELECT statement.
2. Get on first name basis with professor by attending class 3. Convince professor system is broken (ie you never went to class) 4. ??? 5. Profit
They have something called the FERPA. During registration, as a individual over the age of 18, you have to option of allowing someone to call the university and disclose your grades to them. Its a white listing system where by default no one except you is privy to that information. You simply have to allow a person access to it via a form with the Bursar.
Everybody knows what an education or * studies degree means.
It means you had a good time and the teachers and your classmates liked you.
Bob knows how many years it took.
The G.P. does have a point, but it is true world wide.
You get out what you put in.
If you want to slack off for your degree you can do so at most schools available to high school graduates with credentials that reflect that attitude.
None of said schools will appear on any top * colleges list. (Except top party schools. Woo Hoo! 'Hop, Skip and Puke' contest anyone? In fairness Rolla is hardly the classic party school. They lack the girls for that and study way too hard when not competitively drinking to excess.)
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Whatever the pros and cons are, this is a system that is prone to corruption and smacks of "big brother". How much longer before there are video camera's in every dorm room and then you are told what to do when to do it. I certainly don't want my daughter spied on my the "thought police". I also don't like my tax dollars going to this. Hopefully someone will do something to destroy the sensors.
"The Brady Bunch is back...working homicide"
If a student only is issued one card and another student carries it to class then perhaps the student union,the pool,the library and other likely places could not be entered without that card. Even the dorms might require that card to enter or leave. And if the student comes up with a cloned card then computers could easily catch him as he would appear to be in two places at the same time.
It could also get police rolling quickly if a person without a card entered any school buildings. All in all it would greatly aid students to have these cards in use at all levels including staff.
Not sure why it's necessary to mention that... RFID tags are cheap (very, very, cheap) and sensors don't cost that much either. Although on an unrelated note, I agree with others that keeping attendance (especially in college) is stupid. If you can skip class all the time and still get A's on tests, then great. If not, it's your own fault. I understand that much of the attendance-keeping in major universities these days is intended to track down financial aid fraud (people who get pell grants and don't actually go to school), but it's definitely a privacy concern.
Schools get a bunch of my tax dollars for education and this is how they spend it? How is this making students any smarter?
Okay. A professor starts marking final exams and realizes that their exam was too difficult because the entire class failed*. When will this second, "fair" evaluation of the class take place? In the interim between terms? When the new semester starts? Either way, I doubt students will enjoy being called back into a class that should be over and done with because the prof made the exam too difficult, and is now obligated to give a "fair" one.
I don't know what field you TA'd in, but in physics it's bloody hard for a prof to create a "fair" exam. To make a long diatribe short, usually a prof has to either err on the side of making the exam too easy or too difficult, and they always choose "too difficult" because low marks still yield meaningful data about student capabilities. (i.e., it's hard to grade students fairly when everyone scores 100% on the final.)
So, regardless of how you feel about the matter, there's a good reason why grade curves exist.
* Not a hypothetical situation. This has happened at my university.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/
Just finished reading this - and confirms my fears that we are stepping closer and closer to it being fact not fiction.
--------- If its possible it will happen, If its impossible it will just take longer
I think student attendance has direct impact on govt funds the school receives.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
We have RFID secured doors at work, if you have 2 or more of them near the sensor it doesn't work. Its the old thing about 2 radios transmitting at the same time jamming each other.
Exactly!
.
RFID and the policies that surround it can make for an easy blanket "attendance required" policy; a bureaucracy with no flexibility. Typically this policy is, say, 10% for attendance. The slackers couldn't really care while this can be very detrimental to serious students
I worked 40+ hours a week while enrolled full-time in college - it sucked. However, I had an open dialog with my professors and they knew about the absences and the causes. With their cooperation, flexibility in attendance policies, and understanding I ended up graduating first in class*. If my campus had RFID attendance I doubt I would have had this flexibility.
* Actually I firmly believe my work overload helped me earn good marks. I was forced to learn time management because it was blatantly obvious I would fail otherwise. Come to think of it, this is probably one of the greatest things I learned while in college.
if they skip every class and get good grades who cares? And if they don't go to class and fail that is even better as you learn the most from your failures. All this nanny state and big brother crap needs to end. The world is not fair, people need to learn how to deal with it.
If the student wants to waist their money by not attending, let them. They are adults.
If the student has something truly more important to do at that time, don't punish them.
If the professor's ego is so big that he has to demand the captive audience but is to lazy to take attendance, fire him/her.
How lazy can we get as a species?
Anecdotal evidence of a good professor, In a 400 level (senior) engineering class I had a professor that stopped one student from waking another student who had fallen asleep. The professor explained why he didn't mind as he knew his class was not boring and that the student put forth the effort to attend even though it was obvious he was exhausted. That is a good professor, one that can see things from the students point of view. A lot of college students are working thier way though school and realize the value of the education, sometimes they can not make it to class or should not make it to class. College age students are considered adults, treat them as such or they will never act as such.
I don't know if any of you actually took time to read the article, but it doesn't say anywhere that the professors have to use it to take attendance. They said it was collected and the professors could decide to use the data - maybe some will use it for attendance, and maybe some won't. However, I think it's safe to say that having the new technology is not going to make the professors switch their idea about attendance, it just makes it more convenient for those who already take attendance.
At Georgia Tech, for some classes we had PRS systems, which were RF audience polling machines, and each student's was registered to their GT ID number. The professor then 'took attendance' by checking to see if the PRS registered with your ID number answered atleast one question. Most people found out that you could take someone else's PRS to class, and what a lot of people did - a group of friends would switch off who would bring the 5 PRS's to class. We also have RFID cards which make things much easier around campus, from getting into buildings to signing in at career fairs. And honestly, I'd rather have those for attendance classes, have them just scan my RFID ID card rather than buying a $50 answering machine - and it would be easier for people to skip class honestly - putting an extra card in your pocket is easier than answering a question on finicky hardware, or listening for someone else's name.
Summary: It's something which makes something tedious easier and quicker, RFID cards have many other helpful uses on campus, and for the paranoid types you can wear your aluminum foil hats and carry your aluminum foil wallets.
What is preventing a student from giving their card to a friend? Someone else could also take a test for a student if the teacher relied exclusively on an RFID scanner.
8 years ago, I was involved with a project where we handed out key fobs to all students. among other things, it automatically logged their lab time by them entering or leaving the lab. I have since moved on to bigger and better thing, Much Better, but I assume it is still in place and working fine.... That was a long time ago and now this is big news?
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Then too some students bring other's clickers to class.
What are the odds that the use of tracking RFID will expand over time on that campus?
What are the odds that the RFID tag broadcasts the student's social security number in the clear?
When I was in college, student ID numbers were just your social security number with three digits added to the end, unless you were a foreign student. If you lost your student ID, they'd issue a new one and increment one of those three extra digits.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Yes, it really irks me too, when people feign offense (at my "racism"), when I criticize Barack Obama. This is why I've come up with the statement being discussed :-)
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If you are not going to attend class then why are you in college? I recently graduated and most of the prof's where I went to school took attendance and counted it as part of your grade. There were some students who scoffed at it but I don't care. If you are going to waste the prof's time, the college's time, and your own time why not stay in your mother's basement and veg in front of the xbox? I even had one prof that would quietly walk over to the lecturn and silently write down a -1 in his grade book anytime a student came in late or left early. He didn't argue, he didn't yell, he just automatically deducted a point when people behaved irresponsibly. I don't see why the RFID shouldn't be used. Attendance can be taken instantly and also record the time the student enters or leaves the room and then can be used to partially calcuate the final grade at the end of the semester and save a lot of time not having to take roll and send around roll sheets and things like this. Faster, more efficient, and holding people accountable and responsible for their actions. Especially, this is true in public universities where tax money is used to pay for people's education. People should be held accountable for their behavior. Counter to the idea that its treating people like children its actually expecting people to act like adults and be responsible. Maybe I am too "old school" but I am not. The rotten drift wood won't make it in an RFID roll system. I agree that huge classes are silly but even then the lecture can be useful. And in fact, I remember sitting in a class trying to pay attention to the prof when others were talking in the back of the room. Finally the prof yelled at them and told them to be quiet or leave. I also learned to sit at the front of the room to pay attention and see and hear what was going on rather than sit in the back with the idiots that interrupt, and text, etc. So, in this case, even though I am usually against "big brother" initiatives I think this one is good. Put the RFID tag inside the student's ID card and they must have it to enter the room and their attendance and time of entry and departure are automatically recorded and automatically used to calculate the attendance portion of their grade. If they don't like it then tough balls and kiss behind. Go to school somewhere else or go home to mom's basement and veg in front of the xbox.
Again, FERPA = null if I'm paying the bills. It's not his education, it's my bought-and-paid-for- education being put into his head. And the school will inform me as to its quality.
Fair enough then, I agree, BTW my spell checker is on Australian English, so no [sic] is nessary :).
Passport, personal property, day job ID, night job ID...
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
If the same group of people were to be coming to at exactly the same time often, it would become obvious to a log analysis type program. On that topic I also wonder if a RFID card reader can recognise that many cards at once.. As the readers don't have a massive range, they would most probably place two of them at each side of the entrance doors to a class, not allowing the cards that were left unread to be recognised.
Bwahahah.. .Because we know how well online protest-group work...
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
The "non-coding parts of computer science" are usually irrelevent to an actual job though. Of course, different people have different ideas what "non-coding parts" and "computer science" means. Certainly knowing the basics of data structures and alogrithms is a good thing, but then students who can't code know absolutely nothing about the abstracts in my experience. They got though school doing group assignments where they did the documentation, or the presentation to the class, or that sort of thing - which may in fact be useful, but is not the core skillset you need to start working as a developer.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.