Attendance Overhaul

[kona]

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.

[nblock]

- We need to be able to change the name of Roll Call Attendance to whatever we want to call it.

- Excused would be a great option in addition to present/absent/tardy.

-We also need to be able to change the points associated with Roll Call Attendance after class has begun and Canvas should be able to recalculate without having to refresh by taking attendance again.

[jkornheisl]

Just wanted to chime in with the feedback I've consistently received:

- Allow option for additional/custom statuses

- Allow entry of multiple statuses per day (i.e. classes that meet more than once a day, multiple sessions, etc.)

- Provide a "view all" option for courses with multiple sections <- this is the big one

- Ability to remove/hide non-class days; that is, set the calendar to only display M/W/F schedule

Thanks!

[ericreifs]

The reporting is a mess. There needs to be a way to sum up the absents, tardies, and the other options.  

[ziamandc]

How many more people have to comment before Canvas listens?  This is really quite exasperating.

[richard_gardner]

I agree. And it is not only on this issue (Attendance Overhaul) but on several more no-brainer issues.

[nvalentino]

I agree.

There are so many people who find the attendance feature limiting.

Perhaps they are addressing it behind the scenes, but I have yet to hear acknowledgement of any development on this specific feature in Canvas.... Is there any action being taken??

Enjoy your day,

Nicole Valentino

Professor of English

Peace and Justice Institute, Coordinator, East Campus

Peace and Justice Institute <http://valenciacollege.edu/pji/>

Service Learning <http://valenciacollege.edu/servicelearning/>

Valencia College

East Campus

1-340

407-582-2420

[r_v_jones]

This may have been covered elsewhere but having the ability to have a AM and PM element would be helpful too

[lshulman]

<"Allow for additional states other than present, late, absent - ex: excused">

Where do we find this optoin?

[lshulman]

Not sure if this is covered in any of the above comments, but it would be nice if we can check the attendance details for any given student (from the grade book/speed grader) and instantly see their attendance AND badge record for the entire semester. 

If anyone here knows an easy way to check this as it stands now, please let me know. All I can figure is I have to go back to any given day and check "more" for each student and somehow make my own recording or notes. I'd like one place where I can instantly see how many "absences", how many "lates", how many of each badge I have added shows up for each student.

[ericreifs]

It stinks for sure but the only way I know is you have to export the report into Excel and then look at it from there with pivot tables

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[lshulman]

<look at it from there with pivot tables>

See, that is the problem someone above mentioned.  I hardly use Excell so am not familiar with many of its features. I have no idea what "pivot tables" is no less how to use them. That is why I suggest these summary reports for each student be available within Canvas (e.g. when we view their Attendance grade in Speedgrader).

[richard_gardner]

One of my colleagues once showed me how to download attendance from Canvas and work magic with excel to make the report actually useable. However, I cannot remember how, and so I find it much easier just to keep attendance with my own excel sheet: Student names down the left side, and attendance dates across the top. That way, I can fill in each cell with present, absent, or I can write things like football game, sick, attended wedding, etc.

The Canvas attendance feature should be like this: a simple spreadsheet with names down the left side and dates across the top. It makes logical sense, but as we’ve all learned on many occasions with many Canvas features, Canvas isn’t all that logical, and one wonders about the mental state of those who created many of its features. This sounds mean of me to say, but I’m pretty fed up with this and several other issues (like Quizzes Next which doesn’t offer partial credit for matching problems, for example) that haven’t been fixed in years even though they are total no-brainers.

[kmcgrath]

I made a video for my colleagues on this exact thing.  I agree that Canvas needs to fix this, but in the meantime, maybe this will be helpful.  Never could get the video to embed here, but here it is on YouTube:  User Friendly Canvas Attendance Reports - YouTube 

[lshulman]

can you share that video with us? Is it on YouTube?

[mstigter]

Many faculty have an attendance policy that allows a number of absences to be dropped at the end of the semester. It would be amazing if this feature existed instead of forcing faculty to create time-consuming work-arounds.

This thread has been open for 5 years. Has anything changed since it was opened? I tried to add an "idea" in the community today, but it was shut and put in here stating the requests are consolidated under this umbrella. For 5 years???

[richard_gardner]

When our institutionalization adopted Canvas a couple of years ago, my favorite thing was that people could suggest and vote on new features. But sadly, I found out that before we get new features, we need to fix lots of old features, just to make them workable. And I found out that years go by before even the most basic things get fixed…makes you wonder what their software folks do all day. Or may they don’t have software folks.

[eshay]

Ms. McGrath, THANK YOU VERY MUCH! This is an excellent, concise video. I really appreciate it. I've read about pivot tables, but have always been too busy to spend the time to learn how to use them. This will be very helpful.

As for why Canvas has allowed this issue to go on without a fix for five years, 260 comments, and 993 votes up, is beyond me.

With COVID-19, our entire attendance policy was shot! A quick fix would have been helpful.

[kmcgrath]

Glad it was helpful!  Pivot tables seem intimidating, but once you see how they work, they're actually easy to use.  However, most instructors don't use a lot of excel - a fix for this issue is long overdue!  

[lshulman]

As far as not having more than three options for attendance (present, absent or late) if you want to "excuse" an absence, might we just leave the student unmarked (grey)? That would seem to be neutral - neither counting for or against the attendance average.

[dschaeffer]

Is a pivot table in attendance a way to make it better? I missed the video

Shay was talking about. Can you help?

On Thu, May 28, 2020, 10:27 AM kmcgrath@glendale.edu <instructure@jiveon.com>