Can you sort attendance data by badge?

[HarrisonOtis]

Hi everyone,

At the school where I teach, there's a department-wide rule that students must attend 75% of class sessions in order to pass the class. So when I keep track of attendance, I need to be able to keep track of how many classes students have physically attended. However, I also give my students excused absences in case of sickness, such that if they do a certain amount of make-up work I will count them as present even if they physically missed a class. 

In Canvas, I've been notating excused absences by counting students present and assigning them an Excused badge. This makes the grades work out right, counting excused absences alongside actual presences for their attendance grade. However, because of my department's policy, I also need to discriminate between physical presences and physical absences--so I need to be able to count how many Excused badges each of my students have. 

However, I haven't found a way to sort attendance data by badge. Right now, the only way I know of to see my students' total number of badges is to check every attendance record for every day and manually add the total. This would be mind-numbingly tedious, however, and I want to avoid it if at all possible. I did try exporting my roll call attendance data so that I could sort the data using a spreadsheet, but the spreadsheet that Canvas exported left the "Badges" column blank.

Does anyone have any suggestions about how to sort attendance data by badge? Is this possible? Or is my only recourse to count manually?

[ProfessorBeyrer]

Try downloading the attendance report, @HarrisonOtis. The .csv file it creates has a separate row for each date for each student, and you could open it in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel to get the information you need. The Canvas Guides has a document on this:

How do I run Roll Call Attendance reports in a course?

[HarrisonOtis]

Hello! Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in the original post, I tried this option already (and I just retried it again to make sure). Both times, exporting the attendance report left the badges column blank, so I still have no way to sort by badge.

[James · Accepted solution]

@HarrisonOtis,

The document that @ProfessorBeyrer referred to has a section at the top with a blue background that perhaps explains the issue.

Roll Call Attendance Badges are included in course reports if they were created at the most immediate account or sub-account level and have been assigned to students. If the course belongs to a sub-account, only badges created at the sub-account level will appear in reports. If the course does not belong to a sub-account, only badges created at the account level will appear in reports. Additionally, the badges will also only be included if they were set within the time frame you specify in the report.

It sounds like the badges might have been your own creation, rather than being created at the sub-account or account level. The last sentence says it's not something you can retroactively add. That is, if an admin adds an account badge for "Tardy", Canvas will not automatically match the instructor's "Tardy" badge to that. They are separate badges.

Sorry to say, but it sounds like your process of going through each student individually appears to be the only way you're going to get this information.

Things like this are typical for Roll Call attendance, which is part of why I don't recommend it to people. I quickly gave up on it (I've been using Canvas for about 10 years) because I keep track of the percentage of each class that a student comes to, not just a tardy and it didn't meet my needs. I have small classes with no seating charts and a spreadsheet with rows for students and columns for days makes it easy to record information and then generate the data that I need, but that won't work for everyone.

To complete the cycle, here is the documentation on how an administrator can add badges to Roll Call attendance. It also has a nice section at the top with a blue background explaining some of the things to watch out for.

Since your department has this attendance policy, perhaps you could get them to establish some uniform badges  at the sub-account level that instructors could use and that would allow reporting. That is something you would need to bring to their attention, most Canvas admins aren't going to do it on their own.

[HarrisonOtis]

Thanks for your reply - this does clear up the issue. I may follow your example and just stop using Roll Call Attendance from now on.