Attendance

Student Requirements

Students are required to attend the first two sessions of each class. Students who do not attend the first two class meetings may be required by the instructor to drop the course. Students who know they will be absent should contact their instructors in advance.

This rule allows for early identification of open seats so that other students may add into classes. 

If an instructor requests that an absent student drop their class, the student must drop the class themselves in CyberBear to avoid receiving a failing grade.

Neither the Registrar's Office nor the instructor may drop a student. Rather, the student must initiate the drop themselves. View instructions for dropping a class.

Instructor Requirements

All instructors are required to log attendance for the first 15 instructional days of the semester (or the equivalent for shortened part-of-term classes). Attendance is optional after the 15th instructional day of the semester.

Possible methods for tracking attendance include but are not limited to:

Why is attendance required for the first 15 days?

Students must meet attendance requirements to qualify for federal financial aid:

  • For federal Pell grants, students must begin attendance or engage in academic activity in ALL classes.
  • For direct loans, students must begin attendance or engage in academic activity in at least one class.

If students do not meet those requirements, the University is required to return a portion or all of the student's financial aid. This generates an outstanding balance on the student's account.

Academic Engagement Definition

A last date of attendance is a student's most recent known instance of academic engagement. 

Academic engagement is defined as the "active participation by a student in an instructional activity related to the student's course of study," including but not limited to:

  • Attending a class session, lecture, recitation, lab, or other field activity (physically or online) where there is opportunity for interaction between the instructor and students
  • Submitting an assignment or project
  • Taking a quiz, test, survey, etc.
  • Posting in a discussion forum
  • Interacting with the instructor about academic matters (i.e. via email, phone, office hours, after class, etc.)
  • Participating in a study group or group project assigned by the instructor
  • Participating in an online textbook activity or other interactive form of online instruction

Academic engagement does not include, for instance:

  • Logging in to an online class or module without further participation
  • Viewing an online class or module without further participation
  • Academic advising appointments
  • Living in student housing or using a campus meal plan

When are last dates of attendance required?

Course Drop Requests

A last date of attendance must be supplied when approving a student's drop request in Workflow.

Final Grade Entry

Last dates of attendance are required when assigning the following grades during final grade entry:

  • I (Incomplete
  • F (Fail)
  • RF (Remedial F)
  • NCR (No credit)
  • NC (WRIT classes only)

Enter a last date of attendance for each student in the MM/DD/YYYY format, or click on the calendar then select a day.

Be sure to click save as CyberBear will timeout after 30 minutes of inactivity.

Review your roster to ensure that all grades are entered correctly and include last dates of attendance where necessary. Omitting a last date of attendance is a common reason for seeing an error message.

Semester Withdrawals

Last dates of attendance are required when a student receiving federal financial aid withdraws from the semester.

Requests for last dates of attendance are sent to instructors via email from the UM Solutions Center. To report a date, the instructor must reply to the UM Solutions Center email with the requested information.

The University is required to report this information within 30 days of a student withdrawing, and there are multiple processing steps that take place after the instructor replies with a last date of attendance. For this reason, it is paramount that instructors reply to these requests within 2 to 3 business days of receiving the email.

What happens if we don't receive a last date of attendance?

If we do not receive confirmation from the instructor that they engaged in the class, we must adhere to the assumption that the student did not attend. This can negatively impact a student who had actually attended, especially for Pell Grant students. For this reason, it is important that instructors report this information in a timely manner so that the University can meet the deadline for returning those funds but also so that students who actually did begin attendance are not adversely affected by non-responses.

Note that instructors are only required to record attendance/academic engagement for the first three weeks of the semester. However, requests for last dates of academic engagement are sent throughout the course of the entire semester.

Your prompt attention and accurate reporting of last date of attendance helps our University stay in federal compliance and ensures our ability to continue to offer federal financial aid to all students.

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