Teaching tip: Attendance dropping off?

This is a common issue, once week seven or eight rolls around and all the assignments are due, it can be hard for students to get motivated to attend. Even attendance/participation marks seem to be little motivation, and many unis prohibit their use as it can be difficult to verify and moderate.

In the wisdom of microsoft, can this be a feature rather than a bug? Focus on the tutorials for the first half of the semester when attendance is strong, turn the second half into mentoring/support sessions for the students who do turn up. Perhaps you school would allow you to run longer, intensive tutorials in the first part of the semester only, then let students book office hours when necessary for the rest of the semester?

There is a bit of a mental trap where we often make busywork in tutorials because we have the time set asside for tutorials that we need to fill. We think of tute presentations or activities as beneficial in their own right, than to go back to learning objectives to make sure the tutorials work for us, rather than us for them. If we can connect tutorials back to core assessment tasks, we are taking a step toward an integrated course, rather than one where assessment and class activities struggle against each other for students' attention.