Attendance and Seating Charts
The attendance tool provides an option for you to record student absences. Students can access a report from their "Grades" page to see the record of when they have missed class.
Rather than adding a Canvas assignment for each day, this tool will aggregate the days for you and record them in the Canvas Grades as a summary percentage of points possible.
Add the Tool to Your Course
If the Attendance tool isn't already installed to your Canvas course, follow these steps:
Navigate to Settings in your course
Select the Navigation tab
Locate the Attendance tool, click on the 3 dots, then click Enable
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save
Activate the Roll Call Attendance Assignment
After you have successfully installed the Attendance tool to your Canvas course, you will need to "activate" the Roll Call Attendance assignment. To do this, you will need to go into the tool and "take roll."
Navigate to the Attendance tab in your course
Click Mark All Present, then click Unmark All
This is the simplest way to activate the Attendance tool if you don't want to take roll for today. If you do want to take roll for today, then mark each student accordingly.
Navigate to the Assignments tab in your course
Verify that Roll Call Attendance appears in your assignments
Adjust Points Towards Final Grade
The default is that attendance is worth 100 points and is displayed in the gradebook as a percentage. You can adjust the number of points and the grade is displayed using the assignment settings.
Click Assignments in your Course Navigation
Locate the Roll Call Attendance assignment, click the 3 dots, then select Edit
Click More Options
Adjust the points and the format of how you would like to display the attendance grade
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save
Create a Seating Chart
Click Attendance in your Course Navigation
Choose the Class tab from the top menu and ensure Edit Seating Chart is selected
Drag students' names onto the grid to create a seating chart
Rearrange students as necessary (changes are automatically saved)
Taking Attendance
There are a few ways to take attendance using this tool. No matter which method you prefer, make sure that you verify that you are taking attendance for the correct date by checking in the upper right-hand corner. This should automatically update to the current date, but if you would like to change the date, click on the calendar icon and select the necessary date.
Key for marking attendance:
- Present
- Absent
- Tardy
Through Seating Chart
One of the simplest ways to take attendance is through the seating chart:
Make sure you are on the Class tab
Navigate to the Take Attendance tab
Mark your students accordingly
Through Class List
An alternative way that you can take attendance is through the class list:
Make sure you are on the List tab
Mark your students accordingly
Don't Count Attendance Toward Course Grade
Below are instructions on how to be able to take attendance, but not have it count toward your students' final grade in the course.
Click Assignments in your Course Navigation
Next to Roll Call Attendance, click the options button and choose Edit
In the popup box, click More Options
For the Display Grade as option choose Not Graded from the dropdown menu
Click Save
Download Attendance Report
If you would like to download the attendance report to be able to see your students attendance record in a consolidated format, do the following:
Click on the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner, then select Attendance Report
Fill out the form, then click Run Report
If you would like the data of a specific student, then you will input their SIS Student ID in the necessary field, but if you would like the report of all of your students, then you will leave that field blank.
Go to your email and click the link provided to download the report
Open any spreadsheet software to review the report and filter the results as necessary