Connecting the Dots: Mental Health, Attendance, and Higher Education

By Kyra DeLoach

"Classroom, Empty Classroom" by PXFUEL is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Working in higher education, I engage with college-aged students daily. Graduating in 2020, I recall my own struggles. In my role as a Residence Hall Manager (RHM) I am a resource and teaching my learners how to communicate, navigate relationships, have academic success, and much more on the daily.

One thing I struggled with, that many of my residents struggle with each day, is mental health, anxiety and depression. This creates a lot of problems for my students, but one of the ill-structured problems that is most prevalent is poor attendance in class.

As an RHM I am expected to meet with students who live in my residence hall after professors give them Academic Warnings for attendance or missed work. Although I value the connections I make with these students, I believe that professors could do a little more, or use different methods and tools to track student attendance and connect with these students an additional time.

When thinking about the mental health of my residents, I cannot ignore that the resources at our college are not accessible enough, fast enough, or long-term enough. This is a HUGE contributor to student mental health and does not help our students or their desire to attend classes. This was even more clear to me this week after reading a journal article by Laura Thompson that explained how numbers of attendance have gotten worse since 2022. (Thompson, 2023) The journal also talks about changing attendance policies.. another good thing to question. Additionally, an article by Qualtrics showed me my institution is not the only one that struggles with this issue (Qualtrics, 2022).

To search for an answer to this problem, I thought maybe if professors could share a visual representation of absences to use during hard conversations, that could help. I found an app called Alora and explored its features in my video Exploring Alora.

Alora claims to have features such as an attendance tracker, exportable reports, team collaboration, and data backed up in the cloud. What they don't tell you until you get into the app is that you have to pay $29.99 to even see reports-- the one thing I thought could help with this problem.

Alora may make taking attendance easier for educators, but without a supplemental program or $29.99, this serves no purpose for students struggling to want to come to class.

Let's keep the conversation going! I encourage reflection and comments by email or follow me on Twitter @kdeloachMSU.

Reference from Alora Website

References

Thompson, L. (2023). Mental health support in education. Education Journal, 539, 30.

Qualtrics. (2022). College Students Say Mental Health Resources Lacking in Wake of Virtual Schooling. Manufacturing Close-Up.