People tend to fall into habitual ways of doing things
and feel that those repeated habits or beliefs are the one and often the best
ways to do things.
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Habits can be hard to break. As a result they can appear
to be difficult to change so we throw up our hands and say things like “that’s
the way it is” or “That’s just how administrators think”. We accept habitual
behavior and stasis in what we do. We may not like the culture on campus and not
want to accept some of its shortcomings but we do because we believe they are
too difficult to change. For example, when speaking to a senior college
administrator about the attrition rate at his school he told me “I’d like to
get it down but with the way students are and the way faculty act towards them.
It’s tough to make changes so why try?”
In his book The Power of Habit Charles Duhigg
discusses the concept of the keystone habit which he describes as “a pattern
that has the power to start a chain reaction, changing other habits as it moves
through an organiza-tion”. He uses the example of Alcoa’s past CEO Paul O’Neill
using worker safety as a keystone to changing other habits on the work floor
and throughout the company. Duhigg writes “So how did O'Neill make one of the
largest, stodgiest, and most potentially dangerous companies into a profit
machine and a bastion of safety? By attacking one habit and then watching the
changes ripple through the organization. By targeting Alcoa's keystone habit.”
By focusing on safety in the way people acted and behaved
on the shop floor, O’Neill caused other habits people at the company had to
change in reaction. The changes that came about through focusing on increasing
safety flowed through the company and changed the culture and its success as it
did. People in the company believed that O’Neill and Alcoa cared about them.
They wanted to work harder for a company that cared. They came up with ideas to
make safety better. But even more importantly, they came up with ways to make
the company more efficient and effective. When O’Neill gave out his telephone number
and said to call him with ideas or issues, they believed he really did want
them to call and they did. And they had some great ideas to make Alcoa better.
The focus on safety caused the entire organization to
change. It also altered the attitudes of the workers toward the company and
their work. It took the habits that people had prior to the safety focus and
altered them for new, better ones. That is the power of a keystone habit; to
make a difference in the way that people think and behave within a culture by changing
other habits. Even in what had been thought to be a rigidly fixed, union company
like Alcoa which had resisted change for many, many years and numerous CEO’s
the keystone made change in its culture happen.
In many ways Alcoa was like many colleges and
universities. Set in their ways and beliefs. Doing things because “we always do
it that way.” Performing and carrying attitudes out of habit; not reason. Treating students the way we do because,
well, because they are students and we have always acted toward students as we
do. If a faculty person is like one of
my heroes, Taffi Tanimoto and goes out of his way to help students succeed,
then that faculty member will always do that. If however someone is like too
many faculty and feel that students and teaching are “an impediment to getting
my important work, my research done” as a professor told me recently, they will
habitually treat students and teaching poorly. They do not see the classroom as
that important after all. But then we do not do much to break their habitual
behavior and attitudes. We endure them because we think we cannot change them
and the culture that permits such attitudes.
As a result of some faculty’s habitual behavior which
denigrates classroom importance, students tune into that and also start to
believe the class is not that important. They in turn develop bad habits such
as not attending, napping or texting during class. This only re-affirms the faculty
belief that students do not care since they show all the signs of not caring.
But I have also noted that in classes in which the
faculty member says that attending class is important enough to be required and
what she has to say valuable enough to listen to the paradigm changes. Students
attend not only because it is required but because the faculty member is instilling
a new habit in them through class attendance. Students also learn more not just
because they show up but because they take the class more seriously. The faculty
member also takes the class more seriously and prepares more because she is
making the students show up with the promise that what goes on in class is important.
She teaches better and they learn better.
I suggest that a keystone habit that can ripple out and
alter the culture and its habits could well be taking attendance in class. If a
school requires everyone to take daily attendance it would be a new behavior, a
new habit that could change the culture over time.
When a school adopts a requirement that attendance is
not just important but important enough to be mandatory it sends out a message.
It states “we believe that what goes on in class is significant enough to make
you go”. The school-wide requirement to attend also places greater emphasis from
the college on the classroom saying it is so important that we require students
to go to hear from you, the faculty.
Furthermore, if required attendance is rolled out to
prepare students for the world of work where absences are a cause for
termination then attendance becomes part of the training students will need to
succeed. What is one of the biggest complaints of businesses about new workers?
They do not show up to work or are late. Having required attendance will instill
a good work habit in students and provide the new requirement some practical initial
purpose to justify it. Making students attend classes begins to create a good
habit in students that can carry into their lives after school and increase
their success.
Moreover, requiring attendance retention will increase retention
almost immediately because we know that attendance is a key indicator of
whether or not students drop out of school. If students miss classes, they
often realize they are behind and instead of trying to catch up, the give up.
By making them attend, they cannot help but be up-to-date at least on classroom
activity which is paramount to success.
In too many schools, attendance is a very unimportant
thing. The schools let faculty decide if they want to require attendance or not
and most do not. Most faculty take the position that the students are adults
who should make their own decisions even though they are not yet adults but in college
getting the knowledge and learned behaviors training to become one. Most faculty
who do not require attendance require the students to take the tests and do
assignments but not be in class to learn from them. In so doing these faculty
are denigrating their own value. They are saying that what they have to teach
is not that important; certainly not important enough to make you show up to
hear it. They are also sending out a message that it is possible to pass the
course while not being taught by me at all. Just read the books and you’ll
pass. In so doing, the faculty member is saying that he or she really has no
value. If a student can pass the tests without faculty instruction, then that in-class
teaching and that teacher have no value. They add nothing to the students’ knowledge
or skills. This is a terrible message to send out. It devalues the university.
Required attendance reinforces the importance and value
of what goes on in class. It says “we believe that being in class and learning
from professors is so valuable that we are going to require you to be there.” This is a strong value statement. Thus the
view of instruction would rise in importance on campus making a most significant
statement. This will cause a shift in some of the values of the campus culture
as well. It will not relegate research to a lower position in the cultural value
system. But it will elevate teaching in that same system.
This is also stating that the professor and teaching
are appreciated. By making teaching and learning more imperative on campus, it
sends a message that they are important and thus need even greater attention. The
college is stating that the classroom is one of the most vital places on campus.
It makes a case for faculty that if the classroom is important enough for the
administration to make attendance imperative, than what goes on in there needs
to be of the highest quality to justify making attendance required. This in
turn puts additional pressure on the teachers to perform at a high standard to justify
the requirement that students be in class. Faculty could well pick up on this message
and focus more on what they say and do in the classroom since students must and
will be there to learn from them.
This in turn could create a request from some faculty
for workshops in classroom procedure and instructional approaches to increase
their teaching abilities.
There is also a statement made in requiring attendance
be taken that comes from the administration that says it is focusing on the classroom.
By making attendance required, it also says that the administration is tuned into
the importance of teaching and learning and not just looking at the budget as
many faculty believe. To make that decision it has to have thought about what
is best for the learning and teaching environment.
Making attendance required it leads to the next
question of what do we do with the attendance sheets? This could lead to a
decision that there needs to be a system in place that records student
absences. Since faculty may not want the responsibility of doing something with
the attendance sheets outside of the class, these
could go to a central group which would then contact the students to
see why they were not in class. These people could also resolve student issues
before they become problems for them as has been done at a number of schools.
This would have an immediate positive impact on retention by the way.
If someone contacts the student to see why they were not
in class and helps resolve an issue or
make arrangements to have the work made up, this makes a strong case that the school
cares about the students which will also help with retention. Contacting
students is a key to engagement. This is because we know that the
major reason students drop out is they believe the school does not care about
them.
It may even happen that some faculty will realize how important
attendance is and try to find out from students themselves why they missed
class. This would also be a statement of caring about the students if not done
in an accusatory manner. Getting faculty more involved with students is key to
engagement and would be a cultural shift for many schools.
Granted some faculty will complain since they believe
that attendance is a prerogative of the classroom instructor. Perhaps the rollout at your school will be to
require attendance in required classes at first to show the benefits that
accrue. After all, we say that these courses and the knowledge they impart are
so important that we make them required so we ought to also require that
students be in them to gain the value they provide. To do otherwise would be
saying these classes are important enough for to take but not attend? That
makes no sense when one gives it a bit of thought. Moreover, so many of the
classes are taught by lower status faculty and adjuncts that there will be
little pushback from the faculty at large. These two teaching groups are not
all that well empowered or even a part of the fuller culture after all so they
are least likely to complain. But when the benefits of required attendance are
provided, they will build the case of required attendance across the institution
and that will be the start of a cultural shift in itself.
There will be other cultural changes as a result of
requiring attendance across the institution that will arise from the keystone
habit being implemented. Just as with O’Neill in Alcoa, the keystone habit brought
forward many unanticipated cultural changes, so will the keystone habit that
will be implemented when attendance is required. It will cause a chain of
reactions that will ripple through the culture and change it. For the better.
For increased retention.
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