All quotes are from psychology students who filled out a survey sent out via snowball sampling in Week 10 and 11. 19 responses were collected at the time of writing and submissions are still open (see linktr.ee/usydpsychologystudents). Preliminary statistics are referenced but an extensive summary will be available at a later date.
End ‘Mandatory’ In-Person Lecture Attendance
“The School of Psychology frequently emphasises that we are responsible for the effort we invest in our own studies. Making lecture attendance mandatory seems to contradict this principle. Attending lectures in person, and gaining the benefits from it, should be a choice each student makes based on their own goals and learning style. If I believe I can succeed without attending in-person lectures, that decision should be mine to make. While it’s important to educate students on the advantages of attending lectures, ultimately, the choice to take advantage of them should rest with the student, not the teacher.”
— Respondent 12 (2nd Year, B Psychology)
In the past year, a significant portion of unit coordinators in the USYD School of Psychology have introduced ‘mandatory’ in-person lecture attendance components
“You couldn’t really opt out… you would just have to forfeit a portion of your grade”
— Respondent 17 (1st Year, B Commerce)
Psychology subjects are notorious for being content-heavy, with three lectures a week being standard for first and second-year subjects. In addition to a tutorial, the current structure compels students to be on campus up to four times a week for a single subject.
The requirements can look like a quiz question during each lecture or a QR code to scan, and the particular percent of attendance required varies from unit to unit. The key point is that they’re in-person and, according to 15 of 19 respondents, inconsiderate of the diverse needs and responsibilities of students.
Two major barriers to in-person attendance cited by students were “workplace commitments” and “distance / transportation”, sitting at 68.4% and 52.6% respectively. As Respondent 2 (1st Year, B Arts) aptly wrote: “Most people have other important commitments like work which they cannot skip out on which are affected by the three lectures each week.”
Students already deliberately plan their on-campus attendance to fall within a narrow set of days to accommodate their commitments or travel requirements.
Consider, in addition to full-time students, how ridiculous it is for part-time students — often taking a single subject — who are now forced to either a) organise their life around going to campus 4 times a week or; b) undertake the Herculean task of wallowing through bureaucratic procedures with no clear idea of whether their reason for not going to lectures is permissible in the eyes of the overseers.
This is not to say that the fault lies with individual academics or that the School of Psychology is out to disadvantage students. There is undoubtedly a pedagogical rationale or appeal to some observational correlation. Nevertheless, the effects of the policy are de facto classist and cater towards a platonic form of an ideal, privileged USyd student, whether intentional or not. That student is one who does not have to work, who does not have responsibilities, who learns best with in-person lectures, and who lives close to campus. Indeed, with part-time and international students not having access to travel concessions and students like myself from Western Sydney having treks upwards of two hours, the policy is at best out of touch and needs to be abolished.
Obstacles to Consultation
100% of respondents agreed that the School of Psychology should consult students before implementing course changes that may affect students. The iatrogenic consequences of the attendance policy are significant. Yet, the fundamental problem that enables the implementation of such out of touch measures is that students aren’t proactively engaged with in regards to issues that predictably affect them. The recent introduction of ‘mandatory’ lecturers can offer insight into some obstacles to meaningful consultation.
Obstacle 1: The notion of consulting the students, even tokenistically, needs to enter into cognition for the unit coordinator.
In my three years studying psychology, there has been no major indication from coordinators that consultation is needed. I say ‘tokenistically’ because it does not even seem to be a box that needs to be checked. Myself and many of my friends were the first to face the PSYC2016 lecture attendance experiment in Semester 2 of 2023, and there was plenty of robust feedback given in the end of unit surveys. It seems these are sent out into the void.
Obstacle 2: The unit coordinator must contend with the notion that students may be adversarial to what they would like to implement.
In the case of ‘mandatory’ lecture attendance, it probably doesn’t take too much ingenuity to predict that this is the case. Deliberation like this is difficult and somewhat unprecedented. As cynical as it may be, if the unit coordinator is the ultimate arbiter of course structure, and students are going to be difficult about it, why go through the hassle?
Obstacle 3: Even if in good faith the unit coordinator desires to have meaningful dialogue with students; they are overworked academics in an increasingly corporatised university.
Academics themselves are workers that are beholden to a corporate management in which a democratic culture is a hindrance rather than an asset. Each day academics face looming austerity measures — despite billions of dollars in profit annually — the publish or perish imperative, and the reality that one must work well over the hours on paper required to survive. Considering this, it’s no wonder that pressures imposed by the corporate university structure encourages a view that students are another problem in the backlog of many others to be solved rather than important stakeholders to work with. Academics are at capacity and something must give.
Obstacle 4: There is an implicit power dynamic between students and academics that needs to be carefully considered.
Students deeply respect and revere academics and are often afraid to voice dissent or risk being looked upon unfavourably. Lecturers and tutors sometimes forget how much of an impression they can make on students both positive or negative. For the few students that do voice concerns, the potential for momentum is not there because of the atomized nature of interactions.
Where to next?
Psychology students are not aware of their collective power. While my immediate goal is to advocate and work towards abolishing ‘mandatory’ in-person lectures, I ultimately would like to cultivate a culture of grassroots democracy and direct consultation between psychology students and academics.
What this may look like is itself a point of discussion, but for the meantime, a tangible thing students can do is complete the survey (in the QR code) and make other psychology students aware of this article and what we’re trying to do.
I am optimistic about academics recognizing the place we’re coming from. After comments about their unit being one of the few that does not have mandatory lecture attendance, one coordinator noted during their lecture; “this is from my own background. I do a lot of work in equity and inclusion and I know there are reasons people can’t be here in the lecture theatre today.”
I propose open forums that allow reciprocal communication on a collective level and earnest engagement from students and unit coordinators alike. Knowing the radical history of our university, I believe this to be very possible.
For now we have one demand of the department: no in-person lecture attendance requirements for 2025 and beyond.
University Response:
When asked about mandatory lectures in psychology, a University spokesperson sent the following statement to Honi:
“Our School of Psychology offers a range of in-class units of study. Where face-to-face lectures are offered, there is a general expectation that students will attend, but this expectation is no different to other schools in the Faculty of Science or the University more broadly. Attendance is not recorded in lectures for the purposes of assigning participation marks or preventing progression in any unit of study. But to encourage attendance, some units use in-class quizzes during lectures, which have a small allocation of marks associated with them.
“Where this is true, students typically need to complete 50-66 percent of the lecture quizzes to receive full marks for this quiz component, depending on the specific unit of study and its requirements. Completion of the quizzes is not compulsory to pass any School of Psychology units of study.
“The decision by some Unit Coordinators to integrate in-class quizzes as an assessment was largely made to address the drastic reduction in engagement, marks and quality of written assessment measured in our core Psychology Program units in the years following forced lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We have trialled a number of initiatives to address this – and the introduction of in-class quizzes has demonstrated a clear improvement in student attendance, engagement, reduced fail rates and performance in exams.
“All units with lecture quizzes have a process by which students can apply for a mark adjustment if they have a reason why they can’t attend 50-66 percent of the timetabled lectures. This can be done via Inclusion and Disabilities Service (IDS) who prepare academic plans for a student or via special considerations for serious situations that impaired the ability of a student to attend sufficient classes.
“In response to student concerns about their ability to attend sufficient classes due to essential commitments that aren’t covered by the standard academic plans or special considerations system (for example clashes with other units, essential paid employment, or caring responsibilities), we have established an in-house application system via Student Relationship Engagement System (SRES). This is to ensure that students who have genuine reasons why they cannot attend at least 50-66 percent of timetabled lectures are not disadvantaged.”
