Challenges and choices in student attendance

It has been identified that attendance at in-person teaching and learning events in Lancaster University Management School (LUMS) is in decline. This has been identified anecdotally by staff, through the disparity between visual attendance headcounts and online attendance recording, and student feedback. To better understand this trend, and the choices that students are making, this research project gathered data from Undergraduate and Postgraduate students across a sample of LUMS modules. This research aims to explore current levels of attendance, identify barriers to attendance, and investigate the reasons students choose to attend or not attend in-person sessions, including lectures, seminars, and tutorials. The primary aim of the research is to understand what factors inform students’ decisions to attend or not, to evaluate our assumptions about student attendance, and to identify factors that we may not have considered so that we can implement teaching and learning strategies and pedagogies that enhance the student experience and improve attainment.