Engagement Crisis in Teaching [loc-001I]

A sunset and a morning photo of the same location on the Australian National University campus, on the way to my lecture theatre

While this is my time convening a first year computing course, I have taught lectures for first year before, and I have convened large courses before. I consider myself a fairly experienced lecturer. Yet, I was both shocked and deeply troubled to see that, of the 120-odd students that enrolled in my first year computing course (this is the "off-session" run of the very first introductory computing course), only about 40 or so attended the first lecture and, even optimistically assuming that there is no overlap between online viewers and in-person viewers, only about 40 further students saw the lectures online. This means I only saw about a third of the course in person, and a third haven't even participated in lectures remotely, let alone in person.

I think this is an enormous shame. Learning stuff is only part of the reason to attend university. Far more important, at least in my view, is the social aspect. It is one of the few times in an adult's life where it's basically okay to sit next to someone you don't know and just talk to them. After leaving university, the social opportunities can easily dry up, and it pains me to see students basically intentionally throwing this away in favour of online learning.

If I compare to the very first university lecture I ever attended, back in 2008 at UNSW Sydney, which is still on YouTube for easy comparison, it's easy to tell even from the video that the lecture theatre was nearly packed, and the energy among students is high.

Now, I'm not as charismatic or engaging as Richard Buckland, but my students this year are not even giving me a chance to bore them. They didn't attend from the very first lecture. It's quite demoralising.

I also noticed that, of the students that thankfully did attend, at first getting them to engage with even simple questions was very challenging. Partly this was because of the configuration of the room (once I realised how to turn on the front lights after turning on the projector auto-dimmed them, engagement improved), and partly it might have been just some initial nerves from the students. I think the situation is improving with regards to in-person engagement, but attendance is still shockingly low.

My colleagues tell me that attendance figures have been similarly bad ever since COVID hit. Because the course I taught at the University of Edinburgh was an optional later-year elective, I never really observed this problem at UoE, although it could well have been there. I'm curious as to other universities' experience of this. Have there been any techniques that students both liked and which motivated them to attend in person?

I have talked to some colleagues for advice on how to address this, and I got suggestions from withholding marks to bribery, but I think all I can do is teach the people that actually show up to my class, and ignore those that don't. It's quite a dispiriting state of affairs, though.