Podcast to encourage absenteeism?

Review on
7 Things You Should Know About Podcast
Source: Educause Learning Initiative (June, 2005) 7 Things You Should Know About Podcast. Retrieved from: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7003.pdf

I was reading through the newly uploaded material on "7 Things You Should Know About Podcast", and I remembered something...

Earlier this semester (in the beginning of September 2008), I was briefing my Research Methods in Computing students on how to get an idea for a research title and the information system that will be developed for the research. This is for their first assignment on writing a research proposal. Since it's a computing major, they are supposed to think of a product-based research.

A student had an idea and said, "What about a system where a soft copy of a video or audio file on the day's lecture be uploaded immediately after the lecture ends, so that the students who were absent could still catch up with the lecture presented?"

I was a bit sarcastic, even though I was merely 8 months experienced in teaching then. I jumped up and responded, "Oh! So that you can be absent from classes more often is it?"

In the back of my head, I was thinking that the students would eventually find that they do not have to be in a classroom or lecture hall at all if such facilities are available. Even though attendance to classes is compulsory, we still have problems with students who find excuses not to attend classes and blame the lecturers and administration for odd reasons.

Now, after reading the first case scenario presented in the article mentioned above, I thought, "Hey! That's exactly the thing that the students wish for! The technology is here already?" I know that podcast can do wonderful things in bridging to the students who are not able to be around for lectures etc., but just think a moment...

If I were a student, a naughty one let's say, I would attend a few minutes of the lecture just to 'show my face' and get my attendance signed, and then I would go off - disappear from class (either with a reason or not)... Just wait for some time, and I get a copy of the exact lecture I missed from the Net, and I can listen to it whenever and wherever I want to... or never at all!

If it's only one person who thinks this way, I think it's still OK. But what if the whole class thinks the same way?! Eventually, what's the point of lecturing so much and so detailed if no one listens in the first place - there will be nothing to record!

I don't know about you guys, but to me, if the attendance is less than half, I call it off... and I don't care if the whole semester I have to call it off! Because there's no point teaching when there's no one listening in front of me. I won't be knowing (by reading the audience body language, etc.) whether the 'listeners' understand my lectures or not, or wants to hear more examples of the theories I present or not, or... (the list goes on).

To me, my lecture depends a lot on the respond I get on the spot. To me, podcast has a high capability to encourage absenteeism in higher education institutions. To me, we need a control of this if we want to implement the recording of lectures in podcast, such as delaying the upload of the podcast to more than a day or two, and controling the process of signing students' attendance somehow...

Podcast = absenteeism, think about it.

Getting harsher day by day in terms of discipline among students,
- Sha @ Teaching and Learning
16 Oct 2008