My team offers free training on Microsoft Office to students on a university campus. We send out an email advertising the class, and people who are interested in the class register online. Because we have a limited number of seats and computers, we often have a waiting list. A day or two before the class we send out a reminder and ask people to withdraw from the class if they will not be able to attend, and include the necessary hyperlink. We ask them to email an excuse after the class if they miss for an emergency. However, we still always have people who do not show up, and do not email an excuse. This wouldn't be a big issue, except that there were people on the waiting list who would have attended.

Our current policy is that if you are registered for a class and do not show up, then you must email an excuse to us within two business days after the class. If you do not email your excuse, then you will not be able to take any more classes that semester. We include this in the advertisement email, and the reminder email.

Has anyone had a similar experience and found better way to handle the situation? Thanks.

Hi Holly -- You've hit a particularly hot button for me. I've yet to find the magic answer except to keep people fully informed and keep expectations high. It is a sign of utmost disrespect to commit to something and then just not show up. College students should be mature enough to understand that.

First of all, I urge you to send reminders a week in advance. I would also set the expectation bar a bit higher. I inform students that if they are going to cancel, they must let us know at least 3 days prior to the class. I am also very specific about why they must do so -- in particular, I let them know that cancelling at the last minute wastes resources and is inconsiderate to those on the wait list.

Mind you, my comments address only the immediate issue of people not showing up. This is merely a bandaid to fix a much larger issue -- one that your group probably doesn't have the authority to change. Basically, it has a lot to do with the overall campus culture and expectations regarding student conduct and use of campus resources.

Good luck to you. I hope you'll post what you decide to do and how it goes.

Hi Holly! I'd like to reiterate and reinforce the suggestions made by the Fanatic Facilitator. Sending out reminders a week before as well as a day before can be very helpful. I've found that many of the session attendees failed to post the training to their personal calendars. Sending the reminder 1 week out then following up with a second reminder the day before works as an effective tickler.

This leads me to my suggestion: does your web-based registration program have the option to send an appointment/meeting request to the registrant as a form of confirmation? Many of training attendees at my organization have requested this as an enhancement to our home grown web application. Unfortunately, I'm not owner of the application and according to rumor, it is hopefully being upgraded to a formal LMS.

Hope this helps!

Hi Holly,
I think going back a little and starting with creating curiosity around the session also helps. We organise developmental sessions for a lot of functions across the organisation. So the first thing we do is send out the following month's calendar. then we send out an invite 5-4 days prior to the session. We make sure that this invite is an attention grabber with prog. ddetails, objectives, WIIFM etc. It also has the deadlines for nominations & cancellations. 2 Days from the session we send out a reminder along with a cancellation request sheet and then a day before the session a meeting request. All these mails reiterate the fact that cancellations effect session plan: activities, exercises and last minute cancellations(with or without an excuse)will lead to a certain amount being debited from that particular functions account. We follow the same routine for all sessions. This has really helped us a great deal in a. getting nominations and b. ensuring attendance.