The exams season is on again. Students on my own final year option class will be taking their 2 hour answer-two-out-of-six-questions exam next week.  As preparation for that I have offered a series of 'tutorials' on key topics for the exam - four students to a tutorial with the offer that each student (25 in the group) can attend two.  Topics are assigned for each tutorial.  That potentially should add up to over 12 hours of tutorials.  In reality I will actually be doing 9.  These are not part of my department's workload allocations (although because of my PVC role I am not part of that system anyway) and the students attending tell me that they have not been offered this sort of advice session before.  This afternoon I have taken three of these 1-hour sessions.

But why are there only 9 hours - representing 36 student attendances out of the possible 50?  The fact is that a small number of students have not signed up for any of these sessions (some have only signed up for 1, which is fine).  Looking through the list of students in the group it quickly becomes apparent that there is a relationship with the marks that students got for their projects - which were handed back well before Christmas (see my blog of 13 December). One might assume that those who got the poorest marks on the projects would be the keenest to sign up for these revision sessions, and that those who got good marks (and there were some very high performances) might feel confident and not sign up.  The reverse is in fact true.  The absentees from the voluntary revision sessions are precisely those students who got the poorest marks in the projects - and who prima facie need advice and guidance most if they are to perform well overall on the module.  They are also those with the poorest attendance record from the taught period of the module.

I could obviously 'chase' these students to try to encourage them to attend - although there have been a number of general e-mails addressed to the whole class, to which they failed to respond.  But I have split views at this point.  I have kept my side of the 'Our Commitment' statement that was agreed at Senate last session and which was distributed to all staff and students at the start of this acacdemic year, but they are not keeping their side of it by taking an active interest in their learning and making the most of the opportunities offered them.   So one part of me says 'leave them be: they will get their just desserts if they perform badly overall.'

But another part of me realises that if they do badly, have not developed real graduate skills, and end up finding it difficult to secure graduate level employment, that will then rebound on my department, and the wider university, in the employment statistics that will in future be highlighted for potential candidates to peruse prior to making their decisions on which university to commit to.  I'd be interested in others' views on this dilemma that I know is shared by other teaching staff in other departments and in other universities.

One 'benefit' of the post-2012 fees regime may be that students will be more motivated to achieve their full potential in the light of their furture required graduate contributions.  But then the disengaged students of the future could take the view that they are never going to reach the earnings threshold to start making their graduate contribution and thus remain coasting.

Views please!