Risen from the dead, the infamous digital registration of the COVID-19 pandemic past has returned to haunt the students of the 2020/21 cohort who will remember the pale blue sheets of paper which once adorned the sides of desks and doorways of study spaces and campus cafes, scanned to aid with contact-tracing efforts to prevent the spread of the virus on our campus.
A new trial is being rolled out this semester by most university departments to monitor attendance which will now require their students to digitally check-in to lectures, seminars and tutorials by entering a code displayed at the venue into the iSheffield smartphone application. This replaces the paper register, soon to be considered an archaic relic. Digital registration should make attendance monitoring “faster, easier and more consistent” according to the University, whatever that means.
Can we honestly be surprised that another part of University bureaucracy has become digitalised, if not sooner? Will this negatively impact students? Does anybody care? I answer ‘no’ to all three.
Speaking with Tunmishe Moronwiyan, a final-year mechanical engineering student, she tells me the change hasn’t crossed her mind but, if anything, it has made the process of registration faster. Georgia Moretto, a final-year Business Management Student, agrees. Her department has been using some form of digital registration for her classes ever since she began her degree in 2020. “Before we would all have to walk to the front of the classroom and scan a QR code, now we can just stay seated and enter a code displayed on the lecture screen into the iSheffield app”.
Natasha Rouse, a fourth-year Biomedical Sciences student, however, informs me that her lectures which previously weren’t mandatory (even though attendance is highly recommended), now are because those in attendance are required to digitally register. If students can’t make their classes, they must give the department a reason for their absence. Natasha understands that this move could be seen as positive but also sympathises with those students who might watch a recording of their lectures online later or not at all. “If you wanted to prioritise your course work or dissertation, this could make working slightly harder.”
I refute the latter. Having a timetable structured around a ‘working week’ teaches students the importance of a routine and organisation. We must develop the skills to plan around assessment deadlines and exam periods effectively in advance. Unfortunately, in the ‘real working world’ non-attendance is a fireable offence, and your boss will probably think you’re pulling their leg if you ask for an extension.
It hasn’t escaped me that the stakes are higher for Sheffield’s international student body who are contractually obliged to attend their contact hours as a condition of their British student visa. While this change may be more of a concern to them, the same still applies. Students should not miss their lectures.
It’s irksome enough that attendance must be monitored to incentivise students to show up to their contact hours. Unless you find yourself in a circumstance reasonable enough to warrant such absence, I find it pathetic that one might fail to attend an expected session, particularly in light of ongoing UCU strike action. How can a student utter such grievance over cancelled classes but fail to attend those classes in succession? And no, I don’t care how many Jager bombs you downed at Roar last night. If I can show up to a seminar on contemporary security studies on a Thursday morning, glitter still plastered on and eyeliner smeared down the sides of my face then so can you.
Considering Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the government have recently declared all-out war on the humanities – among a long list of other things, including bins, authoritarian council regimes (the dictatorships must end!), vegetarianism, transport infrastructure that isn’t Victorian and the mainstream media (phew! Forge Press is safe) – it’s time for students to fight back by making an appearance at their classes and proving the government wrong: your degree isn’t useless or a waste of time. “But wasn’t philosophy a part of Rishi’s degree at the University of Oxford?” you ask. Yes, but I bet he attended all his classes and look at him now! I digress.
There is something regarding another form of University bureaucracy becoming digitised that saddens me. As someone who prefers not to bring their smartphone to a study space to avoid distraction and procrastination, the use of Multi-factor authentication (MFA), a software which requires students to authenticate themselves twice using the Duo Mobile application when logging into the University’s online portal, is already irritating.
Now that it seems digital registration is quickly becoming every department’s ‘new normal’, students will be required to always have a smartphone on their person while on campus. I find that disappointing. I don’t need to pull statistics on smartphones to inform our readers about how addicted young people have become to their mobile devices. It’s hardly news. But if everyone is required to start each lecture by going on their phones, can we expect students to be giving their full concentration? I’m all for clamping down on attendance but I can’t see the issue with signing a paper register during the class or lecture break.
Call me old-fashioned but my favourite form of registration is answering “here” when the teacher calls out your name, as was the case in secondary school. But then again, I’ve always liked the sound of my voice.