Director of the University of Ghana Academic Quality Assurance Unit (AQUA), Professor Daniel Kwabena Twerefou has explained the need for an intensive monitoring of attendance of students and lecturers, especially during the first week on campus.
He was speaking on the Campus Exclusive show over the monitoring of attendance of teachers and students during lectures.
According to Dr. Twerefou, the intensive monitoring system will encourage a higher attendance rate by both students and lecturers to ensure that effective teaching and learning takes place.
“I think when you look at the lecturer-student attendance monitoring…three, four, five years ago, we almost lost all the first two weeks of reopening, which means that students are not going for lectures and lecturers are not coming. So the 13 weeks that we [had], two weeks for exams, already [the first] two weeks are gone. And it became a big challenge. Unfortunately, this affects academic quality in diverse ways, and therefore the unit decided to monitor lecture attendance. Initially it was to see whether lecturers are coming to class. So we go to classrooms and then we try to [monitor].”
Dr. Twerefou however added that students attendance is still a challenge, especially in the first few weeks of the semester.
He explained that the challenge is due to students needing to complete certain registration processes to fully begin the semester, hence delaying their lecture attendance.
“Over time, we have tried to upgrade it. And what has happened is that we do monitor students. And I can say that the performance of lecturers in recent years has been phenomenal. If you look at the data for the past, you know, three, four years, lectures, about 90%, more than almost 94% of the classes are coming on. Lecturers are (attending). We cannot say the same thing for students. What it means is that, you know, lecturers are putting in more effort, but the students are not. There are problems we do recognize, and especially during the first semester, where you have to look for a room, you have to register your courses. So there are challenges, we do know.”
