Students have a variety of reasons for asking me this. Foreign entrants are sometimes not in Eindhoven at all because they don't have housing yet. Then I get the question by e-mail. Or students have several courses planned in parallel and thus have to choose where to attend or not. A few prefer to study directly from the books and sometimes students just don't want to come to lectures because of a “function elsewhere".

Every year, students are surprised at my answer. Indeed, I invariably reply, “I hope to add value to this course, but no, attendance is not mandatory.” I neither record nor stream my teaching, so if a student wants to know what I am saying, attendance, or a colleague taking notes, is a requirement. In addition, everything I say during lecture is relevant to the exam. The savvy student then asks: “do you then also tell things that are not in the written materials?”

Yes, of course I do. That's what lecture is for. I give context to the books and articles and try to use real-life examples to make the material insightful and lively. This is precisely why I don't record my lectures. I want to be able to say everything, but in context, so that I don't suffer from clipped video clips that take on a life of their own on Youtube.

Yet TU/e itself does not seem to be of the opinion that students should attend lectures. Courses, by definition, are scheduled in rooms that are (sometimes much) too small. “Students don't show up anyway,” is the reasoning. And while this is true for a variety of reasons, it does send a very wrong message. By forcing students to be absent, you are basically saying, “the instructor is not adding value.”

Thank you, so to speak.

Boudewijn van Dongen is a professor of Process Analytics at TU/e. The views expressed in this column are his own.