Attendance and Compulsory Sessions
The Faculty of Social, Human and Mathematical Sciences expects you to attend your academic contact hours. You should treat attendance at all teaching and learning activities as mandatory. Your attendance is monitored by the Faculty. This enables you to participate in the required learning and teaching activities of your modules, and to complete your assignments and examinations on time. If you do not attend two consecutive sessions in any given module, you will be contacted by email.
If you are experiencing an illness or other personal difficulties that may affect your attendance or performance, you should discuss this with your Personal Academic Tutor as soon as possible. In more serious circumstances, you may need to discuss coursework extensions, special considerations and/or the suspension of your programme.
Please click here to view the University’s policy on attendance.
Attendance Expectations in SSPC
In the Academic Unit of SSPC, it is expected that every student attends their modules’ teaching (both lecture and seminar) sessions and all assessments, except in exceptional circumstances. Attendance is monitored, and you should regard all of your modules’ contact hours as compulsory.
Compulsory Sessions in Psychology
In some Psychology modules, attending sessions is compulsory. The reason is that, unless you attend these sessions, it is impossible for you to attain the intended learning outcomes of these modules. This happens in modules where the sessions involve students engaging in hands-on, interactive, and collaborative training or small group tutorials.
For example, during your programme, it is compulsory that you attend all sessions in these Psychology modules:
Other Psychology modules, such as PSYC2020 Empirical Studies Two, have compulsory attendance procedures in place. It may also be compulsory to attend sessions in Year Three option units, depending on the wishes of an instructor. If a module does have compulsory sessions that you are required to attend, you will be informed by your Module Coordinator/Instructor.
In general, however, it is not compulsory to attend sessions on purely lecture-based units. This is because it possible in principle to attain the intended learning outcomes of a unit without attending those lectures. Nonetheless, you are still strongly advised to attend such lectures. If you do not, you will make it much more difficult for yourself to attain the learning outcomes of the unit.
Usually, all sessions in a unit are either compulsory as a whole or not compulsory as a whole. However, it may occasionally happen that only a subset of sessions are deemed compulsory.
Coordinators will notify students in advance as to whether each unit contains compulsory sessions, and in-class roll calls will in any case be taken.
PLEASE NOTE: If you are absent from three compulsory sessions on the same unit without a valid reason, then your marks for the unit will be capped at 40%, and further disciplinary action may follow.
Note too that, if you miss too many compulsory sessions from a unit, even for valid reasons, you may still fail to meet the learning outcomes of a unit, which require attendance. Hence, you may have to achieve those outcomes a different way, for example, through the completion of alternative work assigned by a unit instructor.
Every time you are absent from a compulsory session—and have not yet notified the Academic Unit—you are liable to receive an automated warning by email. (Note: given the automated nature of the system, you may receive such an email even if you have a valid reason for being absent, or even if your absence has in fact been authorized. In such cases, do not worry: the matter will be sorted out shortly, or will have already been sorted out.)
Absence from Compulsory Sessions
If you are absent from a compulsory session, here is what you should do.