Attendance Overhaul

(36)
Right now attendance in Canvas isn't that useful/effective. Below are the ways it could be improved:
  • When viewing a specific student's information allow faculty to see a snapshot of the whole semester, including the specific date that a student was present, absent, late, etc. Knowing the number of days a student has been absent is useful, but for financial aid and other state regulated things we have to provide the specific date of last attendance. Right now this is very clumsy and time consuming.
  • Allow for additional states other than present, late, absent - ex: excused
  • Allow students to view their own attendance report. Right now students can't see their attendance information at all. Make it an option for faculty to allow students to view their own attendance for a semester by date. It would also be useful if there was an option to let students mark their own attendance - ex: they enter in the code for the day to show that they are in class.
  • Provide a print/save option for the entire roster that shows the attendance information by student and date.
  • Provide a more user-friendly data file of the attendance information. As it is right now it is quite messy and unless faculty are comfortable and familiar with excel they have a difficult time doing anything with the data file.
  • Make it an option whether or not attendance information is automatically added to the gradebook. Yes, I know the Roll call attendance assignment can be turned off, but it is confusing and many new faculty don't realize why it's there or what to do with it.
360 Comments
Boekenoogen
Community Contributor

This needs to happen soon. 

keith_rowley
Community Member

Brett, your system looks pretty cool. Can aPlus also simply assign a raw number of points for each day marked “present”? I tell students that each day marked “present” earns 5 points, each day marked “tardy” earns 3 points, and each day marked “absent” earns 0 points. Then students see their running total of points in the grade book. So, after three class days, if a student has been marked present one day, absent one day, and tardy one day, they’ve earned 8 out of a possible 15 points. 

brett2
Partner
Partner

Hi Keith, yes we can do that. I will message you directly with some details.

dewell_justin
Community Novice

Another addition would be to change attendance from a daily situation to a weekly situation. In our online classes, students don't need to be active every day. They must turn in an assignment and post in discussion forums during the week. Failure to do this counts as an absence. I would love to set attendance to a weekly situation so teachers don't have to take attendance every day which isn't very helpful because it's all or nothing.

Boekenoogen
Community Contributor

Any change to attendance is needed. 

kmcgrath
Community Participant

Although not ideal, attendance details like left early or excused can be marked with badges.  For me the bigger issues are a more useful download and being able to see the student's attendance from their people page.  Also agree that the 100 point default is painful - why not make it percent present so it adjusts as you change the point value?  

brett2
Partner
Partner

Hi all, (posting as a representative of aPlus+ Attendance)

I wanted to announce that we are now official Canvas partners. Our attendance LTI can cover a good deal of the functionality requests for attendance that are listed in this thread. More information about our solution is contained in the links below, including videos showing the system in action within Canvas, and the flexibility you have for how it affects your Canvas grades (if you want it to).

Our Canvas Partner Portal page is located here: Link

Our own Canvas LTI resource page is located here: Link

Please reach out to me directly if you have any questions or would like to know more. We are always happy to help.

Thanks,

Brett

brett@aplusattendance.com

keogden
Community Novice

The attendance feature in Canvas is the only AWFUL thing I really hate. We are required to turn in print and electronic copies of the attendance, and printing 40 pages of an excel document is ridiculous. PLEASE address this by creating an active workbook that can print the attendance of 40 or less students in 10 pages or less PLEASE. This is the only thing I have to do separately when I teach using Canvas and it's awful.

There are lots of great online attendance record formats that can be used. Please address this issue!

mmcdowell5
Community Member

I'd like to be able to vary the amount of credit given for "Late" depending on how late a student is to class.  Currently you can only modify this percent overall but not by person or class period. 

It would also be nice to be able to add a comment or note for a student on a particular day's attendance.

daniel_wilkinso
Community Novice

I use the Attendance 2 app.  Many useful features such as "Random" and "Random in attendance" as well as many of the features that others here have suggesting adding to Canvas.  Perhaps Canvas could purchase/rent the whole Attendance 2 app and incorporate it into Canvas?

Chris_Munzo
Partner
Partner

Daniel -- I've seen a new partner in the Instructure Partner Portal -- A+ Attendance.  There is another one, Qwickly, that has just completed its Canvas integration.  You may want to check them out.

matt13
Community Novice

Thanks for the recommendation Chris.  Qwickly's Attendance solution is built specifically for integration into LMSes and to make attendance taking quick and painless, but still provide powerful and flexible features instructors love.  The Canvas integration is something our clients who moved from Bb Learn to Canvas have been requesting and we are thrilled to make it happen. 

The product was built with flexibility in mind, to meet the needs for both instructions and schools alike.  Instructors can take attendance, automatically grade participation, use student ID cards to take attendance, allow students to check in within the Canvas app and more. 

I encourage folks to check out Qwickly Attendance for Canvas for an overview and check out one of our recent webinars.  We always invite schools to run a free trial for a semester, and it's still not too late to get started for the Fall.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

skennedy4
Community Member

I don't know if this has already been suggested - but it would be great if 'Attendance' let you reflect / express student attendance per hour.  So if I'm a student who came to College to attend a morning class that ran from 10am to 11am then came back in the afternoon (of the same day) to attend two classes that ran from 2pm to 3pm then from 4pm to 5pm - 'Attendance' should let me express this attendance.

hrowsey1
Community Participant

Roll Call needs to have a reporting feature to obtain records for an entire semester for all courses for more than 7 days. Since the data can be retrieved for an entire semester when reporting on a specific course or for a specific 7 days, the data must be stored in the system.  It would be nice to be able to retrieve this data an entire semester for all courses at once without having to run a report for each course.

hrowsey1
Community Participant

Attendance for Cross-listed sections needs to have the ability to take attendance as one combined course or as separate sections.

ShereeW
Community Participant

Some of our faculty are asking that the Attendance tool give the option to list all sections like the gradebook does. Many of our courses have students in two different sections that meet at the same time. The seating chart view cannot be used to see all students at once when they are in two different sections. 

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

The Radar‌ idea stage has been removed from the Feature Idea Process.  You can read more about why in the blog post Adaptation: Feature Idea Process Changes.

This change will only impact the stage sort of this idea and will not change how it is voted on or how it is considered during prioritization activities.  This change will streamline the list of ideas 'open for voting', making it easier for you to see the true top voted ideas in one sort, here.

schoon_2
Community Novice

Yes please! Simply allowing us to enter 'Excused' would be a huge improvement...

hrowsey1
Community Participant

I agree!

hrowsey1
Community Participant

Exactly!