Attendance

attendance.png Canvas has an attendance feature, which is also referred to as "Roll Call."

Roll Call includes the:

  • Ability to enter attendance by section. This means that even if you combine two or more sections into one course you can still enter attendance by section!
  • Ability to see students profile pictures while you take attendance
  • Ability to put students onto a "seating chart" and take attendance from the seating chart
  • Ability to assign a grade to the gradebook based directly from the Attendance tool. **This feature is very buggy and it is strongly suggested that you do NOT use Attendance to assign points.**

For additional general information see the following guide - What is the Roll Call Attendance Tool? Links to an external site.

Where to access Attendance

The Attendance tool is located on the Navigational Toolbar on the left side of the page. When you access attendance you will have to click on the name of one of your course sections (from the tabs at the top) to access your student list. If a student hasn't completed the student orientation they will show up in the "Needs to complete Orientation" tab until they have completed the orientation.

Setting up and taking Attendance

Overall the Attendance tool is pretty straightforward, but for specific information on how to set up the Attendance tool and take attendance can be found in the following guides. 

Roll Call Attendance in Gradebook

Once you start using Attendance an assignment will automatically show up on your Assignment index page called "Roll Call Attendance." This assignment must be there in order for attendance to be used. Yet, most instructors do not want this roll call assignment to count as a grade.

To turn off the grading feature of roll call (and just take attendance) change the grading type of the Roll Call Attendance assignment to "Not Graded" OR unpublish it to remove it from the gradebook. Doing this will ensure taking attendance does not impact course grades.

For more information see the following guide: How do I edit the Roll Call Attendance assignment? Links to an external site.