attendance

[LisaPapenfus]

Hello! I am teaching a course that allows students three unexcused absences. After the third absence, they lose 5% of their overall grade for each additional unexcused absence. Meaning four unexcused absences would result in a loss of 5% overall, five unexcused absences would result in a loss of 10% overall, etc. When I entered attendance today, the Roll Call Attendance assignment was automatically created. But I don't know how to create these rules for more than three unexcused absences and the deduction to their final grade. I also allow one tardy, and each additional tardy counts as an absence. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Lisa

[SusanNiemeyer · Accepted solution]

I have found the Canvas "Attendance" tool pretty much unusable for me. I teach remote synchronous classes, and I just take roll on paper,  I don't think there's a way to even specify that I want to take attendance only on the days my classes meet (i.e., Mondays and Wednesdays).

Canvas is not going to give you a way to set up your attendance policy. I wouldn't even bother.

[SusanNiemeyer · Accepted solution]

I have found the Canvas "Attendance" tool pretty much unusable for me. I teach remote synchronous classes, and I just take roll on paper,  I don't think there's a way to even specify that I want to take attendance only on the days my classes meet (i.e., Mondays and Wednesdays).

Canvas is not going to give you a way to set up your attendance policy. I wouldn't even bother.

[LisaPapenfus]

Thanks Susan. I had a feeling that was the case, but I thought I would reach out to the community to see if anyone had found a workaround. I appreciate the quick response!!  🙂

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @LisaPapenfus,

I agree with @SusanNiemeyer.. The Roll Call Attendance tool is okay if you have a very basic attendance policy (no number of excused absences, late counts the same for everyone, grade is based on the percentage of classes attended, etc).  The tool is not currently going to be able to do what you'd like in terms of the grading, though you could still use it just to track the attendance.  You'd have to do the grading manually, which I realize it not ideal.

-Chris

[LisaPapenfus]

Thanks Chris. I had a feeling this would be the case. I appreciate your quick reply!

[MichaelB]

Honestly, It isn't good for tracking the attendance either.  There is no clear way to get a summary.  The only way I've found to make it work requires exporting the data and pasting it into a spreadsheet with pivot tables that then provides attendance summaries.  

The problem is that you cannot get it to do what the OP wants.  I've been trying to figure that out for years and there seems to be no indication that Canvas will ever receive an improvement to the attendance tool.  

To achieve the OP's goal, one has to keep attendance to then look at the final grade in the Gradbook and manually deduct any penalties before turning it into our university's Banner system.  This means that students then get confused when their final grade doesn't match what they see in Canvas. 

[anna_volkova]

Yes, we also do not find Attendance tool very useful and can't think of a workaround that is not manual..

[LisaPapenfus]

Thanks Anna. I wish there was a more useful/customizable application of the attendance tool. I have possibly figured out a workaround (it's manual, unfortunately) that I'm testing this weekend. Fingers crossed!  🤞

[LisaRajnik]

Thank you for the insight, we need all we can get!

[MaryJo-R-H]

I decided to create a 10 point weekly attendance grade and deduct points from that for lateness or unexcused absences. It was too cumbersome to keep fixing the Roll Call Attendance grade. 

[mcclistd]

I am replying to see if there have been updated experiences with the Canvas attendance since the OP. Canvas shows that you can set rules that would theoretically match the scenario of the OP (which I also use), but there are some things that remain unclear. In particular, if I set a rule to deduct 5% of a student's final grade after absence 3, and then set another rule to deduct 5% of the grade after absence 4, is the 5% of the second rule counted as the same 5% as the first rule, or will it be an additional 5% (which is what I need it to be). Thanks,

[AndreaWamboldt]

Hi mcclistd,

Can you share with me how you set up this rule for attendance?  I can figure out how the change the grade book for late work, but I cannot figure out how to the attendance impacted differently.  We want the same 5% for each class missed after 3.

Thank you for your help.