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?

Comments

Attendence in college?

[Hatta]

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.

Re:Attendence in college?

[NFN_NLN]

As someone that taught in a French university: "I don't f-ing care whether students come or not in my class". It is THEIR problem if they fail the exam and the mid term, not mine.

What I find entertaining is some students started a facebook page to protest their invasion of privacy. Isn't that IRONIC?

Re:Attendence in college?

[chebucto]

But you forget that the phrase 'support our troops' is weaselise in the first place.

What, exactly, do you think that the phrase means? 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?

Make no mistake, 'support our troops' means everything and nothing. Effectively, the phrase was coined to stifle debate, "banking on you and I not wanting to raise a fuss because no one wants to be seen as unsupportive of men and women risking their lives. (link)

To quote a real Troop:

http://www.uruknet.org.uk/?p=m26522&hd=0&size=1&l=e

Do you distinguish any difference between supporting the troops and supporting the war?

I have to wonder since I hear that phrase a lot. What does it mean for one to "Support the Troops"? Do they have a list local kids who are serving in Iraq for whom they pray each Sunday Mass? Do they decorate their SUVs with magnetic yellow ribbons? It seems to be a phrase that opponents and advocates of this war alike feel obligated to mention as routinely as they breathe. In fact, for any one to say otherwise since September 11th, 2001 is a veritable anathema. It's a useful quote, whether to reiterate your position or cover your ass. Beyond that, I don't pay it much mind.

I am aware that veterans returning from the Vietnam War were picketed, assaulted and stigmatized. I am grateful to have never experienced that, at least not on a scale with what they endured.

I would like to relate a story to you, which I think illuminates my point.

It was the spring of 2004. I had returned from my first tour several months before. I bought a 2-door Geo Metro hatchback with the money I had earned overseas. My girlfriend at the time was an outspoken critic of SUVs, so I figured she would approve. John Kerry's campaign was picking up steam. A good friend of mine who was working for his campaign in Iowa had sent me a "John Kerry for President" bumper sticker, which I proudly placed on the bumper of my car right above my "United States Marine Corps" sticker. I was driving through Westchester County (one of NY State's more affluent areas) and got caught up in a traffic jam. All of a sudden the car behind me, a huge black Escalade, pulled up beside me. The driver, a fat, red-faced man in his late thirties/early forties began to scream at me. "What the Fuck is the matter with you? Do you support the troops or don't you? Yeah, you're a fucking flip flopper!" It took me a moment to realize he was referring to my "politically confused" bumper stickers. The idea that a person could simultaneously support his military and the democratic challenger was evidently too nuanced for him. And off he went, his magnetic yellow ribbon gleaming in the sun. The irony of a fat forty-something who had ostensibly never served in the military, who drives a gas guzzling road monster berating an Iraq War veteran in his Geo Metro for not supporting the troops would be forever lost on him.

I just can't describe what I am trying to say any better than that.

Saying you support the troops is like saying you love Jesus. To insinuate anything to the contrary, even supporting an investigation of troop misconduct, is to open oneself to all points of vituperation. I realize this doesn't really answer your question. I just hear the phrase thrown around so much, abused and misrepresented for political purposes that I can no longer take it at face value.

Re:Attendence in college?

[517714]

As a freshman I went to my chemistry class six times - first day of class and 5 tests. I got the highest grade in the class of about 300 thanks to having a great teacher in high school (Thank you, Mr Saieed). If I had gone more I would have eventually picked up what the instructor was saying and certainly would have scored much lower. Under this system of monitoring attendance they would undoubtedly conclude that I must have cheated, rather than that the instructor was incompetent and I already knew the material.

Unless the administration can provide compelling reasons why monitoring will benefit students, it should not be done. What is the state going to do when merchants or others start reading the RFIDs and using the information for their own nefarious purposes? Personally I would take it a challenge to screw with the University, clone the tags of mine and several dozen friends, put them in faraday cages and magically appear and disappear all over campus.

Re:Attendence in college?

[bcrowell]

>>If they're wrong, they'll be punished at exam time.

>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.

IAACCP (I am a community college professor), teaching physics. Parent is sort of on the right track, although wrong about the specifics.

Students at my school hate -- hate hate HATE!!! -- any course in which the grade in the course is based 100% on exams. Why do they hate it? Because it's unfair. Why is it unfair? Because their grades on exams are always unfair. Always. They deserved more partial credit. The exam problems weren't the same as the ones in the book. The exam had a problem on that one chapter that they didn't understand, and that wasn't fair, because they understood the other chapters. Also, the student's friend got a bad grade too, and that proves that the exam was unfair, because that shows that nobody could do it.

As a professor, I do not have the option of doing something that is perceived as unfair, even if the perception is totally based on self-delusion and wishful thinking. It's not, as the parent suggests, that the students will sue. It's simply that they will choose not to enroll in my classes. Then all my sections will get canceled. Yeah, I have tenure, but my life is going to get pretty miserable if every class I teach is canceled every single semester.

So what I have to do is cover my exams with a figleaf of other graded work. In my physics lecture/lab classes, 75% of their grade in lecture is based on exams. The other 25% doesn't really have any effect on their grades, but it's enough to convince them that their grade wasn't completely based on those horrible, unfair exams. I've always collected homework papers and written comments on them, but the psychological perception of fairness requires that these papers count for some tiny amount of credit (16% is what I'm doing these days). It's not satisfactory to the students just to get comments written on their paper so they have feedback; they feel that it must count for some pathetic number of points, or else the course is unfair. I've explored some of the other psychological parameters of what they perceive as fair. For example, I've tried (a) giving four equally weighted exams, and (b) giving two "practice" exams that didn't count much, plus a midterm and final that counted a lot. Option b was considered extremely unfair, so I had to switch back to a.

So I have absolutely no option but to have something like 25% of their grade be based on something other than exams. As long as I'm doing that, what the heck does it matter whether or not I take attendance? My school requires me to take attendance, and drop students who don't attend. I don't have a problem with that. I just use homework to determine attendance, and anyone who's not turning in homework (or other written work) gets dropped. If they do the homework but get their friend to drop it off for them, I don't have a problem with that.

What TFA seems to be describing is the kind of thing that happens in a particular sort of class at big state universities. This is the kind of class where there are 300, 400, or 500 students in a gigantic auditorium. State universities teach a bunch of their freshman classes this way because it saves them a ton of money. Students' perceptions of fairness and unfairness are determined by different criteria in this type of class. Everyone knows that lectures in this type of class are a complete waste of time. Everyone knows that this type of class represents an extremely poor quality of education. Given that the whole thing is a sham, it makes sense to do silly stuff like using RFID for attendance, because the whole thing is just a cynical exercise, so why not do the thing that minimizes costs? And students, of course, do not have the option of voting with their feet, because these 500-person classes exist by virtue of the fact that they're required courses, and freshmen have no other options.

closed mentality

[drDugan]

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.

Sign Up To My Facebook Group!!

[Bing Tsher E]

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)

Prove it does not work

[RichMan]

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.