No One Showed Up Today
I have an undergraduate section with only four students. College doesn't usually execute courses that low, but they build exceptions for certain situations. Today, no one showed up. It's the first class after Spring Ruin. Possibly that's it. Has this ever happened to anybody else? How did you respond?
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I accepted that I had done my job (come to class on time, prepared), and used the time to catch up on grading.
Well, seems like you know which material will feature prominently on the next exam...
Better than having just one person show up five minutes late.
This for sure...having just one is terrible (unless it's the right one, and those are so rare now).
Most schools have a minimum attendance rule. If less than 10% of rhe class shows up, we dont have to teach. If one person showed up, id give them an easy pop quiz and call it a day.
Or having that one person be a student who refuses to talk.
Happened to me last quarter in a section with 6 students. Don’t take it personally. In my case, I actually had a great relationship with those 6 students who were in the class. It just was a confluence of factors that day.
Yep, a class of 5. No one showed up. Cool but like, lmk so I don't waste my time. I emailed them all and said as much. It didn't happen again lol
Once a few years ago, similar situation. There was a quiz the next Monday.
This is the way.
I love how it sounds like the quiz was just a naturally occurring event, without any human intervention. 🙃
Why don’t you give everyone zeros on the pop quiz or in-class assignment that you had today?
A couple years ago I had a class of three with two chronically absent. My one serious student and I had a rule - if she was the only one present we would walk across the street and have ice cream while we covered the course content.
During Covid, I had an online class where all the three dropped. So I guess I’ve had two classes with only three students, but that one barely counted. People signed up for online classes back then I knew they weren’t going to show up. One of them just never bothered to drop, ...
I had multiple times when no one (class of 30!) showed.
That makes me feel loads better.
A class of 30! is crazy, how can any one person handle 2.6525286 x e^32 kids??
I've had that too. Like u/InsanityAproaches, I used the time to catch up on other things. It was a course with high expectations for professionalism so the following class, I moved on as if I had taught it and it was on them to catch up using the resources from the LMS.
During Covid, my university banned attendance grades - which basically meant banning taking attendance -- as they did not want to encourage sick kids to come to class. The week that almost all my students had a tough midterm for another class, NOT A ONE of 20+ kids showed up...
They are still responsible for material covered. Start the next course on the material you planned to cover. Do not cover the missed material z
Happened a couple of times. Went back to my office. Seemed foolish to sit there alone.
I sit for 15 minutes and leave if no one shows up
More than 1/3 of my students took an extended spring break. My university is changing our handbook to tell us we can't penalize students for skipping class. They act like 'family vacation' is an excused absence. It feels more all the time like a transaction than some students ...
I had a class with 7 people that I begged to get cancelled. It was pretty clear what was going to happen and I offered to pick up any number of a list of classes. Deans said, no, many of them need it to graduate. Five weeks in, two have dropped, one has withdrawn, two have ...
Wow… That takes an incredible amount of balls: to show up knowing you’re the only two people there and make out the entire time? Seriously this happened?
Yep. Similar small size--I think I had 6 that semester. I stayed in the room 15 minutes then went back to my office to work. After about 45 minutes (so halfway through the class) one of the students comes to my office wondering what happened with class today. Lil late there, ...
Pop quiz next class.
No, pop quiz for the class they missed!
Two weeks ago my class of three only had one student show for a writing workshop. I awkwardly did the workshop with her because she was so prepared. Then, an hour and twenty minutes into the two-hour class someone showed up— without his laptop or writing. I just sent them bot...
Start requiring attendance. There is no other way.
I do! It's even part of their overall grade.
Yeah, I had a senior class with 3 students in it one year (needed for graduation, so it ran). I asked the students to e-mail me if they couldn't make it, since with only 3 students I was making the 'lectures' and interactive as possible and wanted to be able to tailor the clas...
This happened to me the snowy Wednesday before thanksgiving but frankly I was expecting that and I thought the university was irrational for not expecting it as well.
Daily low stakes in class quizzes; no makeups you will drop the lowest one in case of illness. Update your syllabus today. Mine states that I may update course schedule or policies as needed.
Yup, one time during snow when I had a broken ankle. On the one hand, I’m the one paid to be there. On the other hand, I felt no obligation to cover the material another time and it appeared on an exam.
Pop Quiz- all 0’s
I've sent out class emails telling everyone they've received a zero on a pop quiz in those cases before (pop quizzes are in my syllabus though).
I’ve noticed this pattern in students where, if there are planned days off, they’ll just go ahead and take the class day before or the day after to maximize their break. Today, it was snowing hard, the first class after spring break, three days after a tornado hit the school/a...
It's happened to me, but what's in the syllabus is what's in the syllabus: students are responsible for what is covered in class, and we cover group-of-stuff A in session 1, group-of-stuff M in session 13, and so on. For me, it's moot that I didn't actually teach the stuff. W...
Yes, all the time. I understand the weather is bad and TSA is short staffed but not everyone is not having the same experiences. It does not apply to everyone. I am going in prepared and counting down the six weeks.
I once had a class with two students, one of whom got special dispensation to attend one day a week and use the lecture capture provided by the university the other day of class. So for a whole semester, I had a one-student class one day a week. Unless, of course, that one st...
Last week, my class of 4 had 1 student show up for on-time and another arrived 45 minutes late, being the Thursday before spring break I wasn't surprised
I give my student a number of absences before they lose points and then a so many before they automatically fail. I tell them to save them up. You don't know when you'll get sick. And maybe you'll want to take an extra long spring break. So I'm not surprised by low attendance ...
I had only 3/12 students show up for the first class of this quarter
I will just relax and work on my research.
I had a class with three once. It started with nine, three never showed up and three dropped. I just told them “hey guys, let me know if you’re not coming to class. With a class this small, it’s conceivable that no one would show up and I don’t wanna show up if you’re not goin...
Better nobody than just one student—That’s awkward
Yes! I teach really small sheltered sections and I have had this happen. The first time my five students cut class with my coordinators students (their tutors) and got breakfast together.