Write up a short 5 question quiz.
What is a data type?
What is a list?
What is flow control used for?
Basic concepts like that.
Even if they hit Sack Overflow, who cares?
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Yeah, I have all of my lectures setup to approval only, and I’m keeping a blacklist of people who didn’t show up to my class. W.r.t. zero skin in the game, that’s more of a culture problem. If people can’t or don’t attend a class, the least they can do is have the courtesy to cancel and/or inform the instructor so that they can open up a slot. I know the board has mentioned the idea of a global blacklist and I’m fully behind that.
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It’s something I might consider for the future, but if they only know the theory and don’t know how to code, that’s a problem. I’m not going to administer a coding test, since I think that’s asking for too much work of me at that point.
If you’re really that dedicated, you can just show up to the class anyway. I’m not going to physically tell you to leave (within reason), so it’s your onus to catch up.
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This is why I took a few months off. In October I had a fairly large number of no shows. I got lucky in a few cases and had some walk ons last minute but one class had 1 out of 5 show. I have heard others have been texting their students to remind them a day or 2 in advance to allow them to cancel if they needed to and open spots for others. going to try that this month and see how it goes.
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Let’s develop a process to deal with this. it is unacceptable. I would like to see a long term solution that would allow a refund/partial refund of the class fee when people actually attend. You could call a good behavior bonus, but most likely some would call it a fine.
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@simurghi No-shows are from a new problem. Below is a link to a topic I posted over five years ago that got 112 replies mainly from teachers. I limit classes to six or eight so I can have time to work with everyone as needed. This, like your own classes, sets us up for empty seats. I have generally had good results from sending a reminder three days ahead of time but I overlooked that for my class tonight. I’ll report back here on how that works out.
You might have noticed that when you first posted your first class, I immediately signed up but within a few minutes I cancelled. I like to support electronics related teachers and attend their first class. Actually, I popped up the page and registered without reading the description. When I read the description, I realized that you wanted only students who commit for all classes. That is great but I was not in position to make that commitment.
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Hi Brady,
I already send out emails with the class notes and reminders for attendance, on upcoming sessions. I actually need to setup my laptop for your class tonight, as I’m on linux, but arduino shouldn’t be a problem there.
Since I have open spaces right now, I’m more flexible to letting people just drop in. As Burt mentioned, if you have prior experience, I don’t mind people coming in so long as I don’t have to restart my material from day 1. For me, I just don’t want to create exams to test knowledge, as I have no way to guarantee that someone isn’t just looking up all of the answers online.
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My two cents:
Monday and Friday nights are bad days for people to totally forget that they’ve signed up for a class. And, classes more than about a week ahead seem to involve some memory issues, too. I know that Sue likes to put her classes up about 3 months at a time, and then the later classes don’t “make” because people forgot that they ever signed up. The Calendar “claims” that you can get a reminder, but I don’t think it actually sends those reminders.
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If you install the Arduino IDE, you will be ahead of the game. There are a couple more steps I’ go over in class.
I will be in the North Lobby Classroom around six. If you get a chance, come on in.
Thanks for opening up more. I’m doing an online Python class and I’ll definitely catch one of yours when you have an opening on the day of the class.
A note: Any DMS provided solution that increases credit card activity will need to be approved by the Infra and Finance teams at least, perhaps others. They make it happen as well as deal with problems when it breaks and this sort of thing may increase the workload of our all-volunteer teams.
I’m not opposed though and have spent time noodling broader needs: I wish we had a system where incidentals and classes could be charged to a ‘DMS account’ that is settled every month, etc. Doing a Kiosk buy for $1 always makes me cringe.
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It also never gets out of hand for people.
I agree. I’m just trying get folks to think outside of the box a little.
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That has worked super well for me!
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This has been an issue for years, and I would have thought the Board would have solutioned it by now, and communicated the ‘go forward’ process to all committee chairs and uploaded the process to the Wiki.
Tell any ‘would-be’ instructors who don’t like no-shows to charge a small fee, say $5.00, or perhaps more, if the cost of any class being taught results in quantifiable ‘tool usage/materials costs’ (per-person) that cannot be recovered. Then charge that amount as your class fee.
This ‘off the cuff’ process modeling above likely solves 90% of the issue. The remaining 10% (odd-ball scenarios) can be fleshed out by the Board, or their appointees.
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Part of the current problem is that long form classes aren’t great for honarium/no show fees.
5-10 dollars is fine for a single class, but if it is a 9-10 part class, then you can’t restart from the beginning every time. Perhaps I should do a bootcamp like weekend of welding, but I want people to retain the material and practice in between lectures.
It’s a rock and a hard place situation, unfortunately, and there isn’t an easy solution to our problems.
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What you describe is part of that 10% ‘odd-ball’ class scenario. I’d be willing to bet that the number of classes you’re describing (as a percentage of total classes taught at DMS) is likely less than 5%.
I’d say if you’re teaching a class in more than 1-2 sessions, that you need to secure more ‘non-recoverable’ costs up-front (i.e., during sign up). Whatever mitigates your risk most effectively.
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Yeah, it’s unfortunate. It’s my first time teaching at DMS, so I should’ve been expecting more no-shows, based on what @bpamplin and other teachers have said on talk, but it does sting. I might rework the financials to charge 100 or 200 dollars up front (so 10 - 20 dollars a class), but that is a burden to many people. I don’t have many good options, unfortunately.
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Here is the report of my class this evening. i generally send a reminder two or three days ahead of time and get good results. I let it slip but I sent out a reminder this morning. One person cancelled soon after. I put out a “seat available” topic on Talk. Someone grabbed it soon. All six showed up…on time!
When I get out the reminders, the current system works well for me.
It was good to meet and talk to @simurghi. His direction of having a series of classes move through an advanced topic like Python programming is great for DMS education goals but difficult to pull off when students show up after missing previous sessions.
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Data point: 7 of 8 Shapeoko 2 attendees showed up, one no-show/no-cancel and one walk-in.
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Has there been thought or discussion about adding something to the calendar application to track this behavior at an individual class or student level? Off top of my head I am visualizing one more check box next to the attendance box that is labeled “no show” for those that simply ghosted the class. I am not suggesting any immediate functionality beyond simply capturing the basic information (student, class, date-time stamp) into a table. At least then it’s there and being stored for any future consideration, e.g. sending a nag-mail out at a certain threshold (or on each occurrence?) or etc.
Maybe something else worth automating…send reminder to all enrollees 1-2 days before start of class.
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Both of these have been thought about and discussed.
There are tickets to dig into both of them a little bit more, but both have their own challenges involved.
Hoping I’ll have the fix for notifications being sent out sometime end of week…
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