No, so far my experience has been very much the opposite. Students are able to come more prepared or, if they do miss a class, they are able to catch up and return with confidence the following week. My students are adults though, and generally well motivated learners. They also know that in most sessions there will be more going on than they can get just by using the VLE, particularly via f2f interaction with other students, so perhaps that is one way to counter the non attendance?
I agree, for one of my classes this year (GCSE Business) most of the online materials have been available for most year so that students can look ahead if they want to and I haven't experienced any non attendance as a result. I don't however make homework or some "key" exercises available until the day of the lesson. Non attendance was a concern but not anymore.
Likewise - I used a VLE to support my teaching for 7 years, and even though I was teaching students that were prone to be poor attendees I had better attendance ratings than most of my non-VLE using colleagues.
The key is what are you putting on the VLE and what are you doing in the face to face sessions - if the tutor is teaching by transferring half a book onto a bad PowerPoint presentation, and then in the face to face session, they read the text on the screen to the students - then the students may as well duck the lectures and just download the presentation from the VLE.
We have found using the VLE as an integral part of the learning experience also has the opposite effect. Our hairdressing staff have just had the most phenomenal results with our 14-16 students.
Attendance in lessons is almost 100% with student feedback including numerous comments about the VLE being the best part of their lesson as they knew where everything was and they never lost their classroom work, but the best bit was they could go over the work any time they needed.
This included mock end of year tests, for which they group were put in for early as all expectations from their schools were that they would fail, 88 students hit these mock tests over 1100 times and everyone of them passed the end of year test at the first attempt -Approx figures were 84% with distinctions 14% merit and 2% achieving passes. The teaching staff said it felt like the Eureka effect.
These figures have stimulated incredible interest from other areas in College.
We have some fairly strong correlations from 3 different curriculum areas that making assignments available to students on our VLE has had the following effects.
a) increases the frequency of "on time" assignment hand-ins
b) allows for fast-tracking for more able students
c) has increased retention and achievement
So far no real correlation between attendance and use of a VLE
Given the preference of staying at home and working on our VLE, or getting on the bus at 7.00 in the morning and coming to college to see their mates, I bet an overwhelming majority of our students would choose the latter, and so would I !!
We have on-line courses for all of our maths modules. I have found that the students who use the VLE are the keenest students who always attend i.e. poor attenders don't bother on-line either. Also in lesson time we do a lot of active learning in groups, like the standards unit stuff which is completely different/complimentary to the on-line materials.