Fresher’s Attendance: In SAFE hands? A dissection of the freshmen attendance reports being sent to their parents

The institute recently sent the attendance record of the new batch of undergraduate freshers to their parents via email. This initiative, part of several policies introduced in 2023 to reduce stress among students, particularly first-year undergraduates, involves mandatory attendance recording for first-year students and sending biweekly reports to their parents or guardians. This was implemented for the first time for the incoming batch of 2023 and has been continued for first-year students since then.

Insight explored the rationale behind this recommendation through interviews with Prof. Kishore Chatterjee – co-convenor of the Academic Stress Mitigation Committee (ASMC), Prof. P. Sunthar – Head ASC, Prof. Bhaskaran Raman – Head SAFE, and the student representatives involved in the process. We examine the underlying reasons for its introduction, the intended outcomes, administrative execution, and the challenges faced by the students. We finally put forth our opinions on two major aspects: Should the attendance report be sent to parents and is it an effective metric to gauge a student’s academic or social wellbeing?

Background and Timeline of Events

Formation of the Academic Stress Mitigation Committee (ASMC) (6th March,2023)

The Director, IITB announced the formation of the Academic Stress Mitigation Committee (ASMC) on 6th March 2023 via Webmail. This was in response to the preliminary report on the suicide case of 2023, citing academic stress as a major cause of concern. The committee was co-convened by Prof. Kishore Chatterjee (EE Dept) and Prof. Sundar Vishwanathan (CSE Dept). The ASMC was responsible for examining the issues of academic stress among first year UG students, and coming up with recommendations. Several recommendations were put forward, including the proposal to discontinue the option of branch change and reduce the number of credits in the first year. 

For more details, you can read about it in our ‘Removal of Branch Change Policy: Behind the Curtains’  article.

The 255th Senate Meeting (12th May, 2023)

The Senate, which is chaired by the Director, is the highest authority on all academic matters. It is responsible for controlling the maintenance of standards of academic instruction, examinations, and other allied academic matters. The Senate comprises all the professors of the institute and a few student representatives (General Secretary of Academic Affairs (GSAA) – UG and PG, Overall Coordinators of the Student Mentorship Program (SMPCs),  the Overall Coordinators of the Institute Student Companion Program(ISCP) and Institute Research Scholar Companion Program (IRSCP) ). The GSAA is an elected student representative who represents the students in official matters concerning academics. The SMPCs lead the student mentorship program for first-year, second-year and ARP undergraduate students and are aware of the challenges they face.

One of the recommendations discussed during the 255th senate meeting held on 12th May 2023, focused on tracking the attendance of first-year students. The initial discussions around this proposal included monitoring students’ attendance and forwarding it to the students’ faculty advisors, ISMP mentors and parents if the attendance levels were found to be low and concerning.

The only UG representative present was the then GSAA-UG(2023-24) at that time. The SMPc were intimated about the agenda of the senate meeting.  However, since the meeting was held on short notice and the summer break had begun, the SMPCs were unable to attend. This meeting was held offline and there is currently no provision for any Senate member to join online.

Post the 255th Senate meeting

After discussions in the meeting, the senate concluded that the attendance would be sent only to parents. The faculty advisors and the SMP team would not be involved in the process. If a student’s attendance was found to be low, an alert message would additionally be sent to the parents was under discussion, but it was discarded. They also implemented policies that included the removal of DX grades for first year students, limiting the number of credits, giving an FF grade initially instead of an FR to give the students a chance for re-examination – only if they are unable to pass the re-exam shall they be awarded an FR. It is important to note that the existing rules regarding FF grade still hold: the maximum grade that can be awarded after the re-exam is DD. 

Following the recommendation, the ASC and SAFE application collaborated to establish a digital infrastructure to accurately track the student’s attendance for all courses and send it to the parents. The ASC (abbreviated for Application Software Centre) maintains the academic and personal records of all the students, including the email addresses of their parents. SAFE (abbreviated for Smart, Authenticated, Fast Exams) is a mobile application used institute-wide as a means to conduct quizzes and mark attendance. Thus it was proposed as the primary option to mark attendance for first-year students, over the conventional bio-metric attendance system to accommodate large batch sizes. The attendance records would then be sent to the students and their parents through ASC. Some changes were made to the SAFE application which include some minor updates in the app’s user interface, shifting the server from a cloud server to the ASC server, and some more technical changes to be able to handle a large number of requests at the same time.

Once the 2023-24 academic year commenced, attendance started being recorded through the SAFE application. However, it wasn’t sent immediately to parents as the software infrastructure wasn’t ready. Initially, a few students faced issues in registering for courses and marking attendance on the SAFE app.  

‘A majority of these issues were due to students either forgetting their usernames or passwords. There were some cases where the students could mark their attendance on SAFE, but it would not reflect on the ASC portal. This was due to a delay in registering on either ASC or the SAFE app.’

 – Prof. Bhaskaran Raman, PI of SAFE

Some students had raised concerns about discrepancies between their actual attendance and what was recorded in the SAFE app. They also encountered issues with attendance verification, which may have resulted from problems with location tracking or attendance being logged outside the permitted time window. To validate the developed infrastructure and ensure that correct attendance would be sent, the institute sent a trial attendance report to only the students on 16th September 2023.

The 256th Senate meeting (18th October, 2023)

During the 256th Senate meeting on 18th October 2023, the ASC presented a report on the current status of the initiative. There were discussions on the issues faced by the professors while recording attendance and the issues faced by ASC in establishing the infrastructure. Until then, the attendance reports had not been sent to the parents. It was also noted that some students faced issues of attendance not being reflected on the ASC portal despite marking attendance on the SAFE app, and thus, some professors were physically taking attendance. This led to issues in tallying the physical and digital modes of attendance. A few other professors had not mandated attendance in their courses, as they were unaware that it was compulsory to record attendance.The SMPCs raised their concerns to ensure that incorrect information is not sent to parents. The undergraduate student representatives opined for the attendance to be sent twice in a semester. The Senate finally decided that the frequency of sending the attendance report would be once in two weeks.

After the meeting, the SAFE team along with ASC conducted sessions for freshers on how to use the SAFE app to mark attendance and attempted to clarify all the related technical queries. Additionally, the SMPCs were in constant touch with the ASC to prevent inconsistencies in the attendance report being sent. 

On 3rd November 2023, the first attendance report was sent to parents. Such reports have been sent biweekly since then for all freshers. For the academic year 2024-25, the first attendance report was sent to parents on 26th September, 2024, which included the attendance records from 12th August, 2024 to 13th September, 2024. The next report was sent on 16th October, 2024 which followed the pattern of reporting attendance biweekly. It included details on the number of classes conducted for each course and the number of classes attended by the student in each course. The report also noted that there could be instances where a student attended a class but did not mark their attendance, or where attendance was marked but not recorded due to technical issues.

Currently, there are no provisions from the end of ASC to automatically inform Faculty advisors or ISMP mentors if a student’s attendance is below a threshold. If there is a concerning case, a faculty member or the SMPCs may approach the ASC and the records can be made available to them.

Changes made in the SAFE this year

Earlier, there were only two options displayed on the SAFE app, when a student attempted to mark their attendance: “Verified” and “Verification failed”. Thus, for the current academic year of 2024-25, the team decided to improve this interface and introduced another option “Did not mark attendance”. This option is applicable when the student is not present in the lecture and has not attempted to mark the attendance. “Verification failed” is when the attempt to mark and verify the attendance has failed. Further, the team is working to add some more features, for instance, if a class is conducted outside the class hours, how to integrate that into the attendance records.

Reasoning behind the recommendation

Insight interviewed Prof. Kishore Chatterjee, the co-convenor of the ASMC committee who was present in the senate meeting and was involved in recommending this policy. When asked why attendance was chosen as the metric, he emphasised how the academic environment plays an important role in a student’s life. Attending classes helps establish a routine and instills discipline, while also allowing students to interact with their peers and faculty. Attending lectures regularly would help the students stay on board with the lecture content to a better extent as compared to the scenario where the students don’t attend the lectures and only study by themselves. When students discuss the lecture content and the potential common problems that they are facing academically, it helps them socialise and connect over a few common problems.

Prof. Kishore further mentioned that missing classes may be an early sign that a student may be struggling to integrate into the IIT system. Although this is not a sufficient indication it may be the first subtle sign that there might be something affecting the student. Some students missed classes due to feelings of homesickness. Since first-year classes are generally held in large batch sizes, it is challenging for the professors to identify issues with individual students. Therefore, involving parents by sending them attendance records would help monitor students more carefully. 

Insight’s Opinion

Insight carefully examined the above sequence of events considering the intention of the administration and the manner in which the policy was implemented, and would like to highlight the following points for discussion.

Is attendance a good (enough) metric to gauge social integration as proposed by the administration?

 ‘Missing classes may be an early sign that a student may be struggling to integrate into the IIT system’ – ASMC Convenor, Prof. Kishore Chatterjee

We agree with the ASMC, that attending classes may, in certain ways, aid the student in integrating with the academic environment of IIT Bombay; and going to lectures may incite conversations among the students that can extend beyond the classrooms.

Further, from the administration’s point of view, attendance can be considered as a quantitative and the most feasible metric to record and gauge students’ participation in the institute’s system. All the other methods of interaction with the students (through teaching assistants, ISMPs, FacAds etc.) are only qualitative aspects. A student’s level of engagement and openness can vary greatly depending on their personality and immediate social environment, making these methods less consistent for individual tracking. The administration and the faculty can potentially use the attendance to identify the students who may be facing issues, and then can further narrow down to the set of students who might need help or intervention to aid them in improving their future journey in the institute.

However, it has been observed that students may prefer different methods of studying as compared to attending offline classes. Even though attending lectures keeps the students regular with the content being taught, there are students who would prefer to learn through online mediums such as CDEEP and YouTube, or books, which may provide them with better understanding and flexibility in learning. Recording and sending attendance may urge students to attend classes, which may lead to time constraints and limit their freedom to choose their preferred learning methods.

To deem attendance as an effective metric we should judge how much a student’s well-being in class is linked to their attendance. Additionally, we should see how effectively this metric is being used to identify and help students. This metric should be used in conjunction with a complementary policy that is efficient enough for its intended purpose. This has been discussed in detail in the section below.

Should parents be sent the attendance reports?

The first consideration that arises is the students’ ownership of their time and their independence in making their own decisions during their first year. When students come to college, they expect a certain sense of freedom, which in fact is an important part of their overall development. The attendance records being sent to parents may curb this freedom to some extent.

If it is given that the attendance is being recorded, should parents be intimated regularly about these attendance records? Even if the administration plans to include parents in the loop for their student journey, directly reporting the attendance to the parents may not be the best idea. Parents may not have sufficient context about the academic culture in an institution like IIT and might compare it directly to the school/coaching routine. A student may miss a class for a minor health issue or for various reasons (which come from the aspect of owning your time, for instance, working on a project late at night, some sport or cultural practice, or oversleeping the next day). We do not aim to normalise the aforementioned activities, which may affect the academics of the student, and just mean to highlight some possible cases which may arise occasionally.

There are two ways in which one’s parents/family members may react upon seeing their ward’s attendance records are discussed below:

• The parents are relaxed about it and do not have a definite reaction and hence don’t pressurise the student
• The parents are upset because of their child’s low attendance, and may have doubts regarding what their child is doing instead of attending classes and if they are studying or not. 

A student may feel unnecessary pressure and restricted freedom upon receiving such a reaction from their parents. This might create differences between the parents and the child. Potential restrictions or monitoring from the parents’ side may limit the students’ inclusion into the IITB culture in all aspects other than academics.

However, it is also possible that students struggle to manage the sudden freedom given to them in a new environment, which differs from a more structured study routine and lifestyle before college. This might have prompted the administration to include parents in the loop to ease the transition into college. It could be the case that the administration speculated that students would open up more easily with parents considering that when students come to IIT Bombay, most of the people they interact with initially are complete strangers to them.

It may not be ideal for the administration to bypass the established check systems, primarily the ISMPs and the FacAds. These systems were put in place with the aim of achieving the same goal as the attendance records aim to do now, that is, smooth integration into the IITB environment. The current SMP system aids a student’s transition into IITB by having a student mentor guide freshers in all aspects of IITB life and stay in regular contact with them. The mentor encourages the student to interact with others, starting with their wingmates. If the academic performance of a student is low, the mentor offers guidance and support to help the mentee overcome the challenges he/she may be facing. A check is maintained on the mentors through mentor feedback forms that the mentees have to fill out. Secondly, a system of faculty advisors exists that aims to help a student get accustomed to the academics of their specific department. They may conduct one-on-one meetings with students who are facing difficulties in academics to help them navigate through. Students at any time can also approach them to share their academic or non-academic issues.

Thus, a better approach could be to implement a procedure that gives weight to both quantitative aspects (such as attendance) and qualitative aspects (such as how well they are socialising with their peers, taking part in other activities, etc.) of a student’s life before bringing the case to parents. A potential scenario we propose is as follows: if a student’s attendance goes below a definite threshold or a student misses multiple classes consecutively, the professor/teaching assistants can intimate the ISMPs and the FacAds of the student. This process may also be automated using the SAFE app through ASC. As a second step, they can approach the student and try to figure out any potential problems the student might be facing. It might be the case that the reason for low attendance is a situation that the student is not comfortable discussing with their parents. A timely intervention by the ISMP and the FacAd may be able to resolve the issue. If the case is more severe, the administration may inform the parents with the consent/recommendation of the professor, ISMP mentor, and FacAd together (the student’s consent is also considered in many cases). Thus, utilising a quantitative metric initially to narrow down the subset of students, and then getting qualitative information and help from ISMPs and FacAds to take further actions will aid in providing the best help to the concerned students. We realise that this plan might involve a higher degree of effort on the part of these institute systems but we believe that this can serve as a more comprehensive and holistic approach to identifying and addressing student issues. 

Is the attendance metric effective in achieving its intended goals?

Although we have information that the attendance records are sent to the parents at regular intervals, we are not aware of any procedure for intervention that the administration has planned once it finds the attendance of a student goes below a threshold. Currently, the SMPCs and FacAds are not intimated about the attendance data, leaving them at a disadvantage, as they may remain unaware of any attendance issues. Without direct access to this information, these entities lack a clear mechanism to determine if a student is missing classes.  

Consider a hypothetical case where the student is facing troubles, and has consequently been missing classes. The student might be performing poorly in quizzes, but the ISMP mentor is only informed when the SMP receives a notification from the professor and then they relay it via email. Even if the mentor has regular meetings, it may not be evident that the student is facing issues until the mentor is informed. Additionally, unless the professor taking the first year courses decides to review the attendance of students in their course, by approaching ASC for the records by themselves (as currently there is no automated method of intimating the professors of student’s attendance), there is no mechanism for them to intervene. This leaves only the parents in the loop with the student, who may or may not be the best people to understand and help given the kind of situation the student might be in (as discussed earlier about how parents may react). The system here unintentionally puts all the responsibility on the parents and the students.

A better approach would include involving professors, SMP, and Facads in the existing system as mentioned previously.

Conclusion

We would like to refer to the survey that was conducted in April 2023 to gauge potential stressors for first-year students (partially based on which ASMC recommended policy changes in the academic structure at IITB). Despite the shortcomings (mentioned in the ‘Removal of Branch Change Policy: Behind the Curtains’) of the survey, the attendance metric is a step taken by the administration to resolve the issues pointed out in the survey, which included “a lack of interaction with peers” and “staying away from home/family”. In a new environment, students may lose motivation to interact or focus on any activity as a result of homesickness, and this leads to a lack of interaction with peers. If attendance pushes a student towards attending classes they may interact with their batchmates, TA, and seniors who will help them settle in and become more involved in activities. The survey also indicated that 37.4% of first-year students found a “Lack of interaction with seniors”, 41.1% found “Insufficient help from TAs, instructors for understanding courses”, and 12.6% found “unhelpful ISMP mentors”, as a reason for stress/discomfort during their first semester. These statistics could have been a factor behind the suggestion to involve parents. While we acknowledge that the SMP and FacAds are not flawless systems, we believe that completely bypassing them is not the solution, and they should be included at the right steps in potential cases. 

When we interacted with some first-year students and their ISMP mentors, we came to the conclusion that many of the students remained indifferent to the policy as a whole, but their major concern was cases of incorrect attendance reports being sent to parents. Since academics had been identified as the primary source of stress in the survey, the attendance metric may enhance students’ involvement within the IIT system to some extent. However, incorrect attendance reports being sent to parents have become a stressor for some students and may disincentivise them to attend classes. Thus, we feel that this policy is not being utilised to its full potential for the benefit of the students.

The ASMC has introduced a number of measures for first-year students such as the removal of DX grade, limiting the class hours and not awarding direct FR grades. The institute’s efforts to mitigate student stress levels also encompass recommendations that aim to prioritise the mental well-being of students through companionship and social interactions. While tracking attendance can be used as a metric to help identify students who need support, we believe that there can be further enhancements in the current existing structures to include student mentors, and professors, in addition to parents or guardians. Regular involvement in the college environment helps students become more familiar with their batchmates, the facilities available on campus, and the IIT culture. By implementing a systematic method that identifies early warning signs and ensures timely interventions can significantly aid freshers in their integration into the IIT Bombay community. This proactive approach can lead to a more supportive academic culture, where every student feels valued and can grow as an individual.

Editorial Credits: Pratham Srivastava, Tanvi Sharma, Yash Tangri

Design Credits: Sauhardya Kundu, Upasana R

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