Most students have heard about the new state financial aid attendance regulation.
There is a mandatory Florida quiz or assignment due in every class that may or may not count toward your grade but could count toward something bigger.
Any student who receives financial aid and does not complete this mandatory assignment is at risk of losing her or his aid. This can have a little or huge effect on students, depending on if they receive financial aid. It does not affect professors.
Many professors already administer some sort of quiz in the beginning of a semester, usually a syllabus quiz of some sort. For those who simply administer a syllabus quiz, making it count toward the Financial aid regulation is not a hassle.
The regulation is new to FGCU this semester, but is not necessarily new at other schools. Many different schools, both universities and junior colleges, do this sort of attendance regulation.
“I worked at two other schools where you had to document attendance in some way,” said Deeb Kitchen, a sociology professor, referring to his experience teaching at Drake University and Santa Fe College. At FGCU, it is specifically an assignment that has to be done through Canvas.
“Even professors who do not normally use Canvas have to create an assignment,” Kitchen said.
“I think its a good idea, but they could have done it a different way rather than making it a mandatory quiz,” said Anthony Rivers, a sophomore business major.­Maybe an email sent to the studentsEagle mail or an inclass attendance sheet. Something that would complete whats needed for the attendance but not necessarily affect the grade in the class. Each professor administers her or his own quiz. Some, such as Kitchen, use their syllabus quiz, while others make up completely different quizzes.
“The quizzes I had to take were simple questions regarding myself, and were one to two questions,” said Michael Cortes, a sophomore forensics major.­It is a way to prevent students from accepting financial aid for classes that they are not actually going to take. Its not like these are challenging quizzes that are strenuous and time-consuming. They take about three minutes and prevent students from accepting money they dont actually need. Many students were alarmed to hear about the quizzes that had such an effect on their financial-aid status.
“I double-checked three times to make sure I took them all,” said Maribel Gomez, a sophomore communication major.­I was expecting the quizzes to be more difficult and in-depth since they can take away your money.