Overview
The Attendance or “Roll Call” tool is enabled in all bCourses/Canvas sites. It is used to track attendance and appears on the course navigation menu as “Attendance”.
When users go to the tool and begin to mark students either present or absent, a new assignment is automatically generated in the Assignments tool called "Roll Call". This assignment will be listed as having 100 points, and grades are calculated out of 100%. Please do not change this total or any other settings in the assignment. If you change the total, the score will not calculate correctly, especially if you change it after you have already taken attendance. Keep the score at 100 points.
Whenever attendance is taken with this tool, the grade changes, which means that a notification will be sent to students letting them know that their grade has been entered or updated. If you would like to prevent these notifications from going to students, you can mute the Roll Call assignment in the gradebook (see Canvas Guide How do I mute or unmute an assignment in the Gradebook?). Muting the assignment will also hide the attendance grade from students.
Important: If you are taking attendance for students in multiple sections, the grade that is displayed in the gradebook and calculated with the total is not cumulative. That is, the attendance grade in the gradebook will only show the grade for the section that was last graded. Therefore, please do not use this tool when taking attendance for both or multiple sections.
How are grades calculated?
Grades are calculated as a percentage of the number of days a student was present over the total amount of days- present or absent- that attendance was taken for that student (see example scenario below to see calculations). “Late” attendance is worth 80% by default, but can be adjusted according to an instructor’s preference.
If you leave a student unmarked, then that day doesn’t get calculated into their grade. See scenario below:
|
DAY 1 |
DAY 2 |
DAY 3 |
|
|
|
|
Given this scenario, here are the total attendance grades for each student:
- STUDENT TEST-300931: 100% (Present 3 days out of 3)
- STUDENT TEST-300932: 33% (Present 1 day out of 3)
- STUDENT TEST-300933: 100% (Present 1 day out of 1)
- STUDENT TEST-300934: 33% (Present 1 day out of 3)
- STUDENT TEST-300936: 100% (Present 2 days out of 2)
- STUDENT TEST-300937: -- (No attendance taken)
- STUDENT TEST-300938: 80% (Partial attendance)*
*By default, "Late" attendance is 80% of the full attendance grade. To change this value, click on the gear icon and select the "Roll Call Settings" option. A new window will pop up with a slider that you can adjust to the percentage value you prefer.
|
|
|
FAQs
Why did one of my students who missed a class (or two) have 100% on their attendance grade?
This happens because instead of being marked absent, the student was left unmarked for the day(s) did not attend class. You must mark someone as absent- as opposed to leaving them blank/gray- in order for them to be docked or marked down. If you leave them unmarked on a day that they are absent, you are excusing that absence.
How can I make the attendance grade only a percentage of the overall grade?
You will need to create Assignment Groups and put the Roll Call assignment into its own group. Once you have the Assignment Groups set up, you can weight them. Here are the relevant Canvas Guides:
- How do I add an assignment group in a course?
- How do I move or reorder an assignment?
- How do I weight the final course grade based on assignment groups?
Can attendance be taken for LEC and DIS sections?
Unfortunately, no. This is a limitation of the tool. If attendance is taken for a student during lecture, and then again for discussion later in the day or the week, the latter will override the former.
Can I drop or excuse an absence?
Yes; simply leave the student unmarked for that day.
How can I see all of the attendance marks/grades for my course?
The Attendance Report will show you all of the attendance information for the entire class. Instructions for downloading this report are in this Canvas Guide: How do I run Roll Call Attendance reports for an account?
How do I prevent my students from being notified about updates to their Attendance?
The way to do this is to Mute the "Roll Call" Assignment in the Gradebook. This will prevent notifications from being sent to students every time their grade is updated, and it will also hide the grade completely from students. Instructions on muting assignments can be found in this Canvas Guide: How do I mute or unmute an assignment in the Gradebook? https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-2823
Official documentation from Canvas
The official Canvas Guides for the Attendance tool can be found here: Canvas Instructor Guide: Attendance (Roll Call)