Make Attendance Visible to Students

[judyk]

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

I would like for the attendance to be visible to the students in their grades. If students are being graded on attendance, I believe it is important that we as instructors are able to effectively communicate this to the students.

  Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2016-09-17)

This feature release has been delayed and will not be available in production on September 17. An updated release date will be made available soon.

[kona]

In our previous LMS we had the option for students to enter their own attendance (using a code provided by the instructor) and instructors seemed to use and enjoy this option. In addition, faculty and students really liked it when students could see their own attendance record; this was really helpful because students could see for themselves when they had been marked present and absent.

[Beth_Young]

This idea (have students enter their own attendance) is new to me and I really like it. I really dislike the system we have now, where students can't view their own attendance records. Students need to be able to monitor their own attendance and to notice if I have made a mistake. And a class doesn't have to be that big before checking attendance takes up time that could be better spent on other things, if only students could check themselves in.

[molly]

We have a similar rule; every three tardies becomes one absence. It would be great if that option could be built in somehow---if the teacher could customize attendance to count tardies and assign absences after a certain limit has been reached.

[molly]

I didn't even realize students couldn't see the badges. I've been wasting time making them for only myself to see!

[dhulsey]

Yes, Carrie that idea is full of win with some caveats. First, the attendance poll should be mobile friendly for iOS and Android. Second, outside of 1:1 schools​, not all students have smartphones. Most of my students do, but not all of them do. Some  consideration should be given to how to mark those students present without embarrassing them for not having the finances for a smartphone. Perhaps the teacher could also mark the student present?

[carrie]

Very true, Dallas!

The attendance tool could be made to be flexible for various scenarios, including a blended option wherein teachers and/or students can mark themselves present or absent.

[hmcnally]

There's a lot of "why bother" to Roll Call Attendance... a lot of missed opportunity in it to share this data with students, or even advisors. The student view of "percentage only" just isn't enough.

[pattersj1]

I agree that we should be able to share the data easily with both the students and their advisors. The students need to know what dates are recorded for their absence and tardies and the possible reasons. They should have the same visibility the instructor does that shows the total absences, tardies, and the tags the teachers may have created. It would also be useful to have the actual dates of absence show up by student without negotiating the cumbersome spreadsheet.

Joy Patterson

English Instructor

Writers' Den Coordinator<http://cpla.fit.edu/sac/writers-guide/>

School of Arts and Communication

Florida Institute of Technology

150 W. University Blvd.

Melbourne, Florida 32901

321-674-7251

[JACOBSEN_C]

How about adding a line graph to individual view student analytic pages too?

[jbrady2]

 @judyk  Our college just made the Roll Call tool available for the Spring  2016 semester, but I feel many of the faculty I have spoken with will not be using it, or only using it for record keeping, as they do not give a grade for attendance, do not use a weighted gradebook, or both. This would be a great feature that would probably make the attendance useful to many more faculty, at least at my institution.