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 associated point values can be modified to align with your course syllabus.
If you already have an Attendance activity in your course from a previous term, you can skip this step and populate the activity with sessions for this term.
NOTE: You will need to make a second Attendance Activity if you offer different types of attendance, such as lecture attendance and lab attendance, with each type worth a different point value.
Enter your course and turn Edit mode on.
Scroll to where you want to add the Attendance activity.
Click the plus symbol to access the Add content drop-down menu.
NOTE: If you want to add content between two existing activities or resources, you will need to hover over the dashed line to reveal the Add content drop-down menu.
Select the Activity or resource option from the drop-down menu.
Select Attendance from the Activity Chooser.
NOTE: If you don’t see Attendance listed, use the Search box or click the All tab.
Set up the basics for the Attendance activity under the General section:
Expand and populate the Grade Section:
Ensure Type is set to Point.
Set the value of Maximum Points to the total points possible if a student attends every session. For example, if you have 20 sessions worth 2 points each, this activity would 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.
Click the Add session button.
Expand and populate the Add session section.
Set Date to the first day your class meets.
Set Time to the start and end times of your class sessions.
NOTE: Make sure that Create calendar event for session is checked if you would like Attendance to appear on the Calendar found on the Moodle Dashboard.
Expand and populate the Multiple sessions section.
Check Repeat the session above as follows.
Check Repeat on for the days your class meets.
Leave Repeat every at 1 unless your class meets every other week, then set it at 2.
Set Repeat until to the LAST day your 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.
Scroll to click the Add button.
Click All to see all the sessions for this course.
You can remove the sessions you aren’t going to use (e.g., college closure, special event, etc.) by clicking on the Trash can icon next to the session.
Click the Continue button to confirm. Then, repeat the process for each date you won’t take attendance.
You can modify an individual session (i.e., shorten the class session) by clicking on the Pencil icon next to the session.
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:
NOTE: You can modify the points per session and/or the status options as desired.
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 More on the secondary navigation.
Select the Status set option.
Modify the default status Acronym, Description, and Points values to align with your course syllabus.
NOTE: If you have multiple attendance activities in your course that have different attendance statuses and point values (e.g., lab vs. lecture attendance), 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 want to save the status for future use, click on the eye icon to hide the status.
Click the Update button.
