Roll Call Attendance: Same Day Class & Lab

[dejonghed07]

Hi,

We have faculty members who would like to use Roll Call Attendance twice a day in the same course, to track attendance in the classroom and the lab. Roll Call only allows us to take attendance once per day in a course. One workaround we thought of is to use Roll Call for classroom attendance and manually create assignments to track attendance in the labs. Has anyone found a better workaround for this classroom situation? Thank you!

[kona]

 @dejonghed07 ​, check out this similar discussion to see if the work around described would work for your situation - Taking Attendance Multiple Times a Day.

Hope this helps!

[dejonghed07]

Thanks for your reply  @kona ​! We thought about badges but learned that they are visible to faculty only. Faculty would like for students to be able to view their attendance from both the classroom and the labs. Do you have faculty members who use badges that way?  Do students then just see they missed a class or lab one day and ask the faculty member whether they were absent in the classroom or the lab that day?

[kona · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately, no, we don't actually use badges this way (mostly for the reasons you stated). We tried and it just didn't work for the students.

Another work around that we've used is to create an attendance assignment and include a rubric with the class dates and a column for each part of the day you'd like to take attendance. It's a little more cumbersome than using regular Attendance, but gives you more flexibility in grading and allows students to see exactly what they missed/attended for each day.

[dejonghed07]

Thanks - Using a rubric is a great idea for a workaround!

[eshay]

We have the same problem.  We have a lecture in the morning, then the entire class is broken up into two labs, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.  Attendance in the lecture is a pain because we have over 100 students per class.  We have to create some form of TurningPoint question to take attendance or have a quiz in Canvas at the start of the lecture.  We have had a sign-in sheet for the labs and our administrative assistant manually enters all of their attendance into an Excel spreadsheet. Ultimately attendance is only entered into Canvas at the end of the semester.  Attendance is required for the lecture and lab, so it becomes part of their grade.  If they attend less than 80% of the lectures or has a lab that has not been made up with a tutor, then they automatically fail the course for "lack of professionalism."

Any way to record attendance twice a day would be very helpful for our students.  They like to see EXACTLY where they are with their scores.

Eva Shay, DO

William Carey Univ. College of Osteopathic Medicine