From Mr. Sherriff Shittu, 100 level Economics Department (September 2025 Cohort.)
When people talk about attendance in an online university, I think it means different things to different students. For me, attendance is not really about showing up for a live class at a fixed time. It’s about taking my classes on the LMS, going through the materials, watching the videos, and marking the lessons as done. That’s how I engage with my courses. Live sessions don’t happen very often anyway, maybe once or twice a month, so most of my learning happens outside those moments.
Honestly, I haven’t attended many live classes, and it’s not because I don’t care. They just haven’t been very effective for me. I learn much better from recorded videos because I can watch them at my own pace, pause when I don’t understand something, and go back as many times as I need. With live classes, things can get chaotic, and sometimes you log in, stay till the end, and still don’t feel like you truly learned. I’ve had situations where attendance forced me to be present without actually gaining much from the session.
One challenge I face with live attendance is scheduling. Class times are usually shared about 24 hours before, and that sometimes clashes with other commitments I already have. Internet and power supply don’t really affect me much, so that’s not the issue. The bigger issue is that online learning is supposed to be flexible, and fixed live sessions don’t always fit into that idea, especially when recorded materials already exist and work better for some of us.
That said, I don’t think attendance should be ignored completely. I believe students should be penalized for missing classes, not in a harsh way, but because attendance is the minimum way to measure whether a student is familiar with the learning resources. If you’re not engaging with the materials at all, chances are you won’t do well in exams. At the same time, I don’t think attendance alone accurately reflects engagement. It’s a good starting point, but it shouldn’t be the only yardstick.
For me, what matters most is understanding the course content, even more than attendance marks. Ideally, online learning should be flexible enough to allow students download videos and learn offline without stress. I think attendance should still be compulsory, but redefined. Taking classes on the LMS and submitting assignments should count as real participation, while live sessions should focus more on meaningful interaction. Attendance should matter in online schools, yes, but it should support learning, not just force students to log in.
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