Instructor Initiated Drop Policy Effect on Student Success

Abstract

One of the student policies at the University of Texas at San Antonio deals with the expectation of students to attend class regularly and participate in class activities. In 1980s and early 1990s Instructors had the freedom of administratively drop those students who were not attending lectures or were not submitting homework assignments. In mid 1990s the university changed the policy of allowing instructors to drop students administratively and left the decision of dropping courses solely as a student responsibility. With the change in this policy more students avoided attending lectures, especially in large class sizes, or submitting homework assignments. This resulted in higher student failure rate. More recently the university changed this practice by establishing a new Instructor-initiated Drop policy. The new policy provides specific guidelines for those instructors who want to adopt and enforce this policy in their courses. Under the new policy the instructors are required to state in their courses syllabi the limits for number of times a student being absent or missing assignments, before that student can be dropped from the course. An instructor who adopts the instructor-initiated drop policy must first inform those students who are approaching the unexcused number of absences or number of missed assignments limit, before dropping students when the limits are reached. This paper provides a full description of the Instructor Initiated drop policy. It provides the results of the enforcement of policy in three different courses taught from fall 2018 through fall 2019 semesters. The paper provides data on whether the new policy improves class attendance, completion of homework assignments or student success in passing the courses.