The Physics Education Forum is a bi-weekly group that meets to provide a space to broaden our knowledge and experience about the teaching and learning of physics.

On a day where our classes may be a little less full due to the start of spring break, let’s talk about attendance! How does student engagement (or presence) in your class fit into the learning experience you expect them to have during your course? What policies do you implement, or avoid, to support this? What are the ideal student behaviors you’d want to encourage around attendance and learning? To help frame this discussion, I encourage you to check out one of the two following papers:

• (Review paper): Moores, Elisabeth, Gurkiran K. Birdi, and Helen E. Higson. "Determinants of university students’ attendance." Educational Research61.4 (2019): 371-387.
• (Single study): Chenneville, Tiffany, and Cary Jordan. "The impact of attendance polices on course attendance among college students." Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning(2008): 29-35.

The Physics Education Forum is open to all faculty, students, and researchers from physics and beyond with an interest in expanding their knowledge and experience about education topics. Feel free to forward this information to anyone you think would like to join us!

At our last meeting there was a request for a shared resource folder. I’ve created a box folder where I’ll be dropping papers, and other materials, going forward: https://utexas.box.com/s/qm9z1ergxu9y7tp1xaq38e5kt4pu05pt.