Track Attendance in a Face-to-Face class 


Here is the full documentation on attendance.  


Here are the quick start steps:


Activate Attendance

If Attendance is not in your Course Navigation:

  1. Click Settings
  2. Click the Navigation tab
  3. Find Attendance and click 3 dots | Enable
  4. Click Save


Set up Attendance

You must set up attendance before using it.  The first time you take attendance, Canvas creates a 100-point assignment named Roll Call Attendance.  If you don't want it to be worth 100 points, you need to edit that assignment.  But you *must* do it in a certain order or else it won't work.  Here are the steps:

  1. Take Attendance:
    1. Click attendance
    2. Select a date
    3. Mark all as present
  2. Edit the Assignment:
    1. Click Assignment
    2. Click Roll Call Attendance
    3. Click Edit Assignment Settings
    4. Change the points.  If you don't want it to count toward the grade, change the points to 0. (Do *not* change the name, ever.  The name must remain the same the entire semester. Do *not* unpublish the assignment. Direct from the documentation: "To avoid Attendance calculation errors, never delete, rename, or unpublish the Attendance assignment.") 
    5. Click Save
  3. Unmark then re-take attendance:
    1. Click Attendance
    2. Select the same date you previously selected
    3. Click Unmark All
    4. Now take attendance by marking Present, Absent, Late or Excused.


Use Attendance

After the setup and first use, just take attendance.  Pick a date and mark students present, absent, late or excused. Look in the gradebook to see the attendance % for each student.  


Note that students can go to their own gradebook, click the attendance item and see a pie chart of their present/absent/late/excused attendance.


Help

If you want help with the setup, or if you have been recording attendance without doing the setup properly, we can help!  Don't undo your work, just put in a help desk ticket.