Why and how FASoS should stay on top of attendance in PBL

The abolishment of minimum attendance requirements at FASoS just over two years ago has been a recurring topic of discussion. Literature on students’ persistence and results often highlights attendance as important, because absenteeism would increase the risk of dropout. Intuitively, one would expect attendance to be even more important in programmes with an active learning environment, such as PBL. Research finds that active learning environments have a positive effect on students’ study success, yet few studies have looked at the importance of (non-)attendance in such learning environments. In 2018, we published an article in Higher Education that addresses this gap. In this blog, we provide new data to contextualise the discussions on attendance, and present options for further research and refinement of the faculty’s attendance policy.