Add/drop seems innocent enough: A week or so at the start of the semester in which students can move freely in and out of classes. Maybe they weren’t able to get into a class during registration, but–mirabile dictu!–a spot finally opens. Maybe you’re interested in a particular subject . . . but not at 8am MWF. Maybe that professor reminds you of your dad’s drinking buddy, and you can’t take him seriously. That’s all fine.
At my school, add/drop lasts about a week–but then students can drop without penalty for roughly three weeks.
This presents some challenges:
- If you have semester-long group assignments (such as, for example, a wikified class notes project), then you need to manage the groups more aggressively than you might expect. For a long time, I thought I could just divide things up alphabetically the first week, and everything would be ok. Not so much: Any statistical clustering (for example, 3 students drop whose last names start with R, S, or T), and a group is decimated. Organization is key. (ProfHacker, heal thyself!)
- If you have an absence policy: Say a student adds a MWF course at the end of the first week. Have they been absent 3 times? Zero times? (Discuss.) I’ve seen people argue both sides of this very passionately.
- Sticking with that student who added the course at the end of the first week: What do you do if they show up at the next class without contacting you for a syllabus or assignment?
This semester, add/drop is uniquely challenging because I have a gen ed course with a mandatory study abroad portion. It’s clearly stated in the online description, but most students just look at the requirements the course fulfills + the spot in the schedule and sign up. Since anyone who doesn’t sign up for the trip will be disenrolled from the course, every single day for a week now I’ve had to say, “if you didn’t expect to go to London . . . .” They all drop, and then 15 new kids sign up in their place. It’s been frustrating!
That’s an extreme case, though. How do you handle the ebb and flow of students? Any tips or ticks?
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13 Responses to How do you handle add/drop?
Nels P. Highberg - January 28, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Are people finding an increase in people adding late because of the economy and financial aid issues? One of my advisees just moved back this week after classes had already started because she/he did not think they would be able to return, but our financial aid office was able to make it happen, but only after a week of classes. I assume this is happening for students all over?
Nels P. Highberg - January 28, 2010 at 12:16 pm
No tips or tricks right now. Just saying that our students can add for up to three weeks with instructor permission, and I’m the guy who handles all requests for the writing program, which is exhausting. But this semester, I’ve been very generous adding to my intro to gender studies class. We’re at 35 right now, and the cap was 25, then 30. I’m taking everyone on this semester because I wanted to have the experience of a large class. The grading is not too bad (it’s a 100-level class, so it’s more short assignments than long ones), and it’s a whole different feel having a class larger than 20, my usual cap. I needed to be shaken up a bit, so I decided to let everyone add. I don’t have an attendance policy, though, or semester-long assignments or anything like that. They can make up what they’ve missed easily.
Stan - January 28, 2010 at 12:24 pm
Of course, I am going to sound cynical, but concerning the course abroad situation, why not let them be automatically dropped on the second week? Why worry about students who cannot read the course description (and therefore don’t care about the work that you, the instructor, are putting into the course)?
On the other hand, concerning a BIG issue of group assignments, I usually don’t assign students into groups until at least 3-4 weeks into the course. By that time, the majority of those who drop the course would have already done so. But, of course, there are always exceptions.
Another way that I have found helpful, is to let students find their own group partners. Most of the time, they pick those whom they already know. In such cases, students have a sort of a built-in trust relationship with each other and usually they are more open about their prospects of staying in the class. In other words, if one of the group members may be thinking about dropping the course, their partners will probably know about this from day one.
Courtney - January 28, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Add/Drop makes me extremely grumpy. Missing the first week of a 15 week course seems equivalent to skipping over the first paragraph of an article. It disrupts my whole semester. I’ve though about designing courses in 2 parts: one for the add/drop period and one for the “real” course, but I really haven’t figured out a way to avoid feeling like that first week is lost. I’m pretty sure, as a student, I never participated in add/drop, possibly because I spent so much energy researching instructors and course content and analyzing my course of study and course offerings well before registration time, so I still find myself wondering what the virtue of add/drop is anyway? Asking that question doesn’t solve anything, of course. I’m eager to hear other ideas for making that inconvenience work, or possibly even for recharacterizing it as something other than an inconvenience. Currently, I mostly use my grumpiness about it to encourage students to lighten my grading load by dropping my course and adding a less grumpy teacher.
PhilosopherP - January 28, 2010 at 1:32 pm
I have similar problems with “fluid” classes. I’m pretty lucky that my Drop period is only about 10 days long… so I don’t have the groups issue..
As for late add students, I have a statement in my standard syllabus stating that ALL classes in the semester count. No matter when you “joined” the class, you are responsible for material on class days missed AND they count toward your maximum number of absences. I often have students sit in class until they can get registered, so if they’re on the ball — they don’t have absences until they are officially registered.
GLG - January 29, 2010 at 7:37 am
As a chair, I’m always amused by the faculty who refuse any and all overrides but then get upset when students don’t get into a class until space becomes available, often at the very end of the d/a period…especially when history tells them that a student or two does drop each semester.
I have absolutely no issue with the “if a space opens, then you can get in” approach, just don’t punish students for then actually taking the only option given them!
Erin E. Templeton - January 29, 2010 at 10:17 am
Wow, wait lists. Blast from the past! We don’t have wait lists at my Small Liberal Arts College (SLAC), and while students do register online initially, all changes to their schedules are on paper and require their advisor’s signature, whether before the semester begins or into late add/drop period.
I don’t usually have to deal much with late adds. One of the benefits of such an intimate campus is that advising tends to be pretty effective in getting students sorted out with their schedules. Another benefit is that there is usually space for most people in the classes. But on the occasions where I do have late adds, I have not enforced a retroactive attendance policy. It seems unfair to me to penalize a student or being absent before s/he knew that they needed to be there. I will add, however, when I taught at my gigantic alma mater, and had WLed students wanting to add the course, I told them that they needed to attend all class meetings and that if they did and weren’t admitted off the WL by the end of add/drop, I would admit them. Those were often some of my best students because they really wanted to be a part of the class.
Late drops are fine with me as an instructor (less grading!), and they are not uncommon here. Many of our students underestimate the amount of work that a given course will entail (or they over estimate the amount of time that they’ll have to do it), and drop in the first week or so. I’m less fine with them as an advisor because I have to sign every drop form for my advisees, which can lead to a flurry of anxious emails asking for my signature.
Jason B. Jones - January 29, 2010 at 9:26 am
But what happens when the chair says, “don’t give out overrides, because there’s plenty of room in other classes”?
:-)
The real issue at your school is the fact that the registration software can’t accommodate a waiting list: Often, what happens is someone who’s actually shown up to class or been in contact with the professor gets squeezed out by someone who’s not even interested in the class at all.
Rana - January 29, 2010 at 1:58 am
I’m not seeing the add/drops affected so much as the students’ ability to obtain their textbooks. Due to some quirk in the financial aid system’s calendar, many of them don’t get their first check until several weeks into the course.
…back to the OT.
joanna - January 29, 2010 at 1:16 pm
Our community college has piloted electronic wait lists this semester so that students can be waitlisted for a course, and, if a space opens up, they are notified via email and given 48 hours to register. If they choose not to register, then the next person is contacted. Having only two comp classes that had waitlists, I’m not yet able to critique the system, but . . .stay tuned. I’ll let you know about it next term.
joanna - January 29, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Yes, I am seeing the economy and financial aid changes affecting registration as well as drop/ add. Students who are paying on their own are dropped during one of the pre-semester checks for payment, so they are then dropped from my roll. Some show up on the first day asking to be let back in, but by then my class is full ,and since we are strict about not adding to our comp. classes, the student has to either find an open class or attend my class for a week on the chance that some of my students are dropped.
Tria - January 29, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Ugh, Rana. I have that issue also. Luckily, our campus keeps extra copies of our textbooks in three locations for student use. In the library, students also have access to a photocopier so that they can copy the required pages and bring them to class. One nearby bookstore also rents textbooks. On the first day of class, I make a point of discussing these options with the students. Yet, over and over again, I see students that throw thier hands in the air and give up at the first obstacle, thinking that “I don’t have my book yet” is a free pass from doing any of the required work for the course.
Which, more pertinent to the original topic, also seems to be the attitude for many of the students that miss the first week of a course–”I wasn’t here, so how can you possibly expect me to do any of the readings or work to catch up?”
I just had to give a big sermon on personal responsibility to my students today over these issues, so I’m still a bit riled up, I’m afraid.
Nels - January 29, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Ohio State had a waitlist system like this back in 2002-3, and I loved it. I never had to sign a form or do a thing. It was a bit disconcerting to see that a class for 40 students had a waitlist of 83 (and for an elective), but it wasn’t my problem at all.