The Attendance activity is designed for teachers to be able to take attendance during class, and for students to be able to view their own attendance record.
A teacher can mark the attendance status of a student as “Present”, “Absent”, “Late”, or “Excused”. These status descriptions and point values can be modified to align with your syllabus.
If you already have an Attendance activity in your course from last term you can skip this step and populate it with sessions for this term.
You only a need to make a second Attendance Activity if you have different types of attendance to take such as lecture attendance and lab attendance with each type being worth a different point value.
Enter your course from the top-right corner of the page, toggle Edit mode into the On position if you haven’t already.
Click the Add an activity or resource link below the (first/top-most) general section of your course.
Select Attendance from the Activity Chooser.
NOTE: If you don’t see Attendance listed you can use the Search box at the top, or click the All tab.
From the new page where you establish Attendance Settings:
OPTIONAL: Change the Name of the Attendance activity if you have more than one attendance type
Expand the Grade Section
Ensure Type is set to Point
Set the value of Maximum Points to the total points possible if a students attend every session. (ie. If you have 20 sessions worth 2 points each this should be worth 40 points.)
Click the Save and display button.
You can now add the sessions for the coming term to your attendance activity and use it to take attendance.
You need to complete these steps to add sessions to your Attendance activity at the beginning of each term.
Enter the Attendance Activity you wish to populate with sessions.
Click the Add session button.
Expand and populate the Add session section.
Set Date to the first time your class meets down to the hour class starts.
Set Time to the start and end time of your class session.
NOTE: Make sure that Create calendar event for session is checked if you would like it to appear on the Calendar found on the Dashboard.
Expand and populate the Multiple sessions section.
Check Repeat the session above as follows.
For Repeat on check the days your class meets.
Leave Repeat every at 1 unless you class meets every OTHER week in which case you would set it to 2.
Set Repeat until to the LAST day the class meets.
Expand and populate the Student Recording section if you want to allow students to mark themselves as present.
Check Allow students to record own attendance.
Select a method of verifying student attendance: Password and/or QR code.
Click the Add button at the bottom.
Click the All to see all the sessions for this course.
You can remove sessions are aren’t going to use (ie. college closed, class won’t meet, etc.) by clicking on the Trash can icon next to the session.
Click Continue button to confirm and repeat for each date you won’t be taking attendance.
Click the Play icon to mark attendance for the session.
If you have not set up your sessions for Student recording, you will need to mark attendance for each class session manually.
Enter the Attendance activity.
Click the ▶︎ button to the right of the current session.
For each student check the proper status and enter any remarks.
Default status set options:
- P stands for present (full credit)
- L stands for Late (1/2 credit)
- E stands for Excused (1/2 credit)
- A stands for Absent (no credit)
NOTE: You can modify the points per session and the status options if you would like.
Click Save and show next page button.
Attendance activities are graded by marking attendance status for each session, the default attendance statuses and point values are:
You can modify the status set to align with your course syllabus.
Enter the Attendance activity.
Click the More menu on the secondary navigation.
Select the Status set option.
Modify the Acronym, Description and Points values for each default status to align with your syllabus.
NOTE: If you have multiple attendance activities in your course that have different attendance statuses and point values (lab vs. lecture attendance) you need to select the New set of statuses option from the drop-down menu.
If you need more statuses, populate the Acronym, Description and Points with the new attendance status details.
Click the Add Button.
If you need fewer statuses, click the trash can icon to the right of the status you want to remove.
NOTE: If you may want to use that status in the future you can click on the eye icon to hide the status instead of deleting it.
Click the Update button.
