PART TWO: Making Fun of People Who Make Mistakes on the Attendance Forms and the MAT Screen
I don't make mistakes and I know you don't either. BUT, there ARE people on campus who do and what better way to entertain us than to make fun of them behind their backs! Let's laugh at some of the common mistakes made when using the scannable attendance form or the MAT screen.
Mistake Number 1: Not doing it. The MCC error rate greatly increases when we have missing attendance information. Everyone who is solicited for non-attendance needs to comply. If you don't turn in your attendance, you are a huge error.
Mistake Number 2: Turning the data in after the deadline. Once we have done the drop for attendance, the late data is not used for dropping the students. While we record the data for financial aid, it is not figured in the drop and therefore increases our error rate. It is only slightly better than Mistake Number 1 although we appreciate the effort.
Mistake Number 3: This is everyone's favorite! So I have to put it in caps. MARKING EVERYONE IN YOUR CLASS WITH A LAST DATE OF ATTENDANCE. Ha! They all get dropped. That's a good one. Here is where the confusion I addressed in the last article comes into play. We aren't looking for the last date that each student in your classes attended class, we are looking for the last date the missing students attended class. Just keep this in mind--marking someone absent may mean they get dropped. Do you really want all the students in your class to be dropped? Possibly so. Please wait and do it after the census date.
Mistake Number 4: Adding dates to the attendance scanner. Think about it. If you add a date to the top of the form and then bubble it in, HOW DOES THE SCANNING MACHINE KNOW THE DATE? Sadly, it doesn't. Our technology isn't that advanced. Consequently it sees it as an error and rejects the roster, thus adding to our error rate. If the roster was turned in early enough, we can rectify this by having someone manually enter each student's attendance data (believe me, they will not thank you for this) but if we are just getting the roster in in time for the attendance drop, it is rejected. Up goes the error rate.
Now you are thinking, this about covers it, right? The answer is no. The next installment will continue with pointing our fingers and laughing at people who make attendance reporting mistakes.
(The first article in this series is available in the Daily Tribune archive. See the link at the bottom of the right hand column.)
Deborah Benjamin
Registration and Records
02/11/2004 |