Monitor Student Attendance

Introduction

Attendance in Canvas is done via the Roll Call attendance tool. This tool can be a useful tool to quickly record daily attendance, particularly for smaller classes. You can choose to view the tool in a list or grid format and can customize the placement of each student in a seating chart. This page will help you learn how to use the attendance tool.

On This Page:

    1. Activating attendance
    2. How attendance is recorded
    3. Assign specific points to each class attended
    4. Attendance badges
    5. Student self-updating their attendance
    6. Attendance report

 

Activating attendance

The Roll Call attendance tool remains inactive until the instructor marks any single student absent or present for a particular day. To begin using the tool, click Attendance in the Canvas course menu, find a particular day and mark students in the roster present, absent or late. As soon as you take attendance for the first time within a course for a single person, Canvas automatically creates an "assignment" worth 100 points and an associated column in the Gradebook. The grade in this column will update automatically each time you take attendance.

Review the following tutorial to learn more about how attendance is graded in Canvas:

NOTES:

  • Students can never see the Roll Call tool.
  • No matter how you use the Roll Call data, the Roll Call “Assignment” should be placed in its own Assignment Group in order to not adversely affect the rest of the Gradebook. You should do this as soon as the first student’s attendance is recorded.
  • If you wish to take attendance, but not have the records be directly included in a grade, then make the Assignment Group worth zero percent (or make the Assignment worth zero points).

 

How attendance is recorded

Grades are recorded as percentages by default, but they are calculated based only on days on which the attendance is taken via the tool. Students marked late receive 80% of the daily score although the instructor can adjust that in Roll Call settings. For instance:

  1. On the first Monday of class, Kim, Ken and Lou are all present. Their attendance is 100%.
  2. On Tuesday, there is no class so the tool is not used. Kim, Ken and Lou’s attendance is still 100%.
  3. On Wednesday, Kim is absent, Lou is late but Ken is present. Ken’s attendance is 100% and Kim’s is now 50%. Lou’s attendance is 80% for Wednesday and 90% over both days.

You can change different aspects of the Roll Call assignment such as displaying attendance as points, changing total points or the default lateness percentage for lateness.

Review the following tutorial to learn more about how attendance is recorded in Canvas:

 

Assigning specific points to each class attended

To record attendance as a grade, make the Assignment Group worth a particular percentage (i.e. 10%) of the course grade or worth a certain point value (i.e. 100 points). Roll Call will automatically divide the total percentage/score according to how many days attendance was taken.

On the other hand, if you wish to assign points to each session (i.e. five points per class), you would need to determine how many total days the class meets during that semester. For instance, if a semester is 15 weeks in length and the class meets twice a week, then there would be 30 Roll Call class sessions to record (or 45 for meeting three times a week). You would then multiply the number of points per session by the total number of sessions. To take the previous scenario, five (5) points per class times 30 sessions would be 150 points. Then set your point total for the Roll Call assignment to 150.

NOTE: To keep the point totals accurate, you must always take attendance for every class taught.

 

Attendance badges

The Roll Call tool includes “badges” which allow instructors to add notes about a student’s activities on a given day.

Read the following tutorial to learn more about attendance badges:

 

Student self-updating their attendance

Canvas does not currently support students updating their own attendance via daily PIN codes or other alternatives.

 

Attendance report

An Excel-compatible Comma Separated Value (CSV) attendance report can be exported and sent to your Penn State email address. Click the Setting gear icon for export options.

NOTE: If you do not see the Settings icon in Roll Call, scroll to the right.

Things to Know about Attendance Reports

  • When you run an attendance report, it will be emailed to you as a spreadsheet that includes the following columns: course name, teacher name, student id, student name, class date, attendance, and a timestamp.
  • Attendance reports include multiple rows for each attendance date (for example, if you have 20 students, you will have 20 rows of data for each attendance date).