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Attendance

Shortly after the start of the lab, you'll need to take attendance. As laboratory supervisor, you should do this rather than allocate it to a demonstrator. You can permit the job to support your supervisory role - indeed some of the best supervisors appear to spend almost the whole laboratory time taking attendance, and structuring everything around it. Attendance taking by you ensures that every student gets to speak to you at every laboratory. You will begin to notice students who are struggling, so you can target your efforts and those of your demonstrators towards them. If you are also the course lecturer for the lab, it also gives you a chance for direct feedback on how students are coping with the work. Ideally you want to build a ``relationship'' with your students, so they can feel relaxed with you and you can get to know them a little. Attendance taking is a good start.

You take attendance by simply ticking the first column against the name of each student who is present. Those you leave blank will be interpreted as absent. If someone is absent, but a reason is given (e.g. by a friend that says ``oh, she's ill'') then record that as an excuse ``E'' and give a brief reason (see §7.4 above).

Occasionally, a student may have been given an excuse in advance for not attending the session. You will see an ``E'' in the attendance column in this case. If the student is in fact present, then simply change the ``E'' to a tick.

You will find that many students raise some difficulty they are having as you take their attendance. Perhaps they were too shy to ask for help by raising their hand, or perhaps they think only you can help them. If the problem looks like it will take some time to resolve, beckon one of the demonstrators over to solve it for you. If you do this in a non-dismissive manner, the student will realize that you have faith in the demonstrators' ability to help them. You may even ``fake'' phrases like ``Oh, Robert is the best person for helping you with that sort of thing''. Obviously you will use your own approach and style here, but don't give the impression you do not care, nor should you give the impression you are willing to solve all their problems for them at their whim.

Finally, please don't forget what we said above about students whose names do not appear on the sheet for the session.


next up previous contents
Next: General conduct of students Up: The first laboratory Previous: Marking protocol   Contents
John Latham 2008-10-30