the case(s) for optional attendance?

Have any of you made class attendance optional (i.e., that there are no grade penalties for absences, neither is there any requirement to drop the course after a certain number of absences)?

It sure does put a damper on a class when significant numbers of students aren't prepared or when they're obviously distracted by various distractions. And maybe -- maybe -- making attendance optional, while still having high standards for class preparation, could be an effective response to that problem. Maybe it signals, "you don't have to be here, and there's no penalty if you're not; but if you are here, then you'd better be focused, not surfing the Web, and ready to go", and makes good class sessions more likely.

Student e-mails revisited

Chris' post last year about student e-mail styles and habits garnered a lot of discussion, and this older post on 'How to e-mail a professor' (from Orange Crate Art, Michael Leddy's blog) offers some good positive advice to students about how to e-mail a faculty member.

There are several tips there, but here's the summary:

Yet one more way to feed your ISW fix

UPDATED FEBRUARY 10: We're now in the Kindle bargain bin. Amazon's lowered the monthly cost to 99 cents!

You can now read ISW on your Kindle! Yes, Amazon's fabulous e-reader now offers blog publishing, so the Kindle-enabled among you can now get ISW delivered wirelessly to your e-reader.

Here's the page with all the information. The downside of course is that Amazon charges for such services: $1.99 a month in this case. We still think it's worth it! ISW may see a small revenue stream from Kindle sales. Perhaps we can poll the readership about which worthy cause might benefit from this revenue.

A Psychological Cause of Grade Inflation?

Yesterday, my colleague Matt Pianalto and I were having a brief discussion in the hallway about grading. Something I've wondered about in the past, and which we discussed, is whether a particular psychological cause sometimes contributes to grade inflation.

'Academically Adrift' reading group

So the global academic buzz over Academically Adrift has prompted us to organize our third ever ISW reading group (following groups on James Lang's On Course and Martha Nussbaum's Not for Profit). Here's our plan:

We'll begin the group the week of February 28. You can anticipate two or three posts per week, in addition to the usual ISW content. Since the book is brief, we're not going to adopt the chapter-based approach we followed with past reading groups. Instead, ISW contributors will offer posts highlighting themes or claims in the book, linking these themes or claims to teaching philosophy. Richard Arum and Josipa Roska, the book's authors, have indicated they may drop by from time to time to offer comments on our discussion.

Becko will kick us off February 28, with Mike, Jason, Chris, Adam, Vance (and others) to follow. I'll wrap things up with my own post on March 17. Hope you'll join us!

A win for the virtues

Just wanted to draw everyone's attention to our colleague Chris Panza's post at A Ku Indeed!, a paean to the epistemic virtues in the wake of Academically Adrift.

Chris' basic idea is that much of academic success comes from habits acquired and reinforced in academic settings.  His coolest idea: We should question the notion that students are long-term rational actors who make learning-related choices and exert academic effort in accordance with their perceived long-term goals.  Habits — the virtues or the lack thereof — shape students' learning efforts more than does commitment to long-term goals:

Responding to hateful ideas

Patrick O'Donnell draws my attention to a pair of posts (one, two) by Mary Anne Franks at PrawfsBlog. The issue: "What role should one's own views play in the response to homophobic, sexist, or racist sentiments, expressed either by students or in the class material itself?" Doubtless this is a problem philosophy instructors sometimes encounter.

There are a number of considerations in the air in Franks' posts and in the comments. Franks contrasts two general approaches:
(a) To respond negatively to students expressing such sentiments would amount to expressing one's own sentiments, a violation of the detachment or neutrality instructors ought to manifest.
(b) Detachment or neutrality in the pedagogical sphere is impossible. Neutrality is violated simply by the texts we choose, the topics we address, etc. Thus, no special worry is raised by responding negatively to students who express hateful sentiments. In a sense, it would be ethically irresponsible and show a lack of integrity concerning one's own values not to respond negatively.