Keep track of students' attendance from within a given AsULearn course.
Add the Attendance activity
1. From your course homepage, click the gear icon (top right), and select Turn editing on from the menu.
2. In the topic where you want the Attendance link to appear, click the Add an activity link.
3. Under Activities, click Attendance, then click the Add button at the bottom.
4. On the Adding a new Attendance page, click to expand the Grade section to set your preferences for grades with relation to attendance.
CAUTION!
The Center for Academic Excellence strongly recommends selecting Grade Type: None to keep the attendance activity from affecting your gradebook totals.
Many faculty lower students' final grades when a certain threshold is crossed. For example, if you want to lower a student's grade after three absences, then set Grade Type: None, and manually adjust grades at the end of the semester.
5. Click Save and display to show the Attendance setup page for the course.
6. Click the Status set tab to review the options for marking attendance. The default settings are: Present, Absent, Late, Excused. Points are set to 0 if Grade Type: None was set (step 4). If you make changes on the Status set page, click the Update button at the bottom to save them.
7. Click the Add session tab to add attendance dates/sessions for your course.
- In the Add session section, enter the Date and Time for the initial class meeting.
- In the Multiple sessions section, select Repeat the session above as follows to set up sessions for the entire semester.
- Repeat on: Select the days of the week that the course meets.
- If the class meets on those days every week, leave the default on Repeat every 1 week(s).
- Repeat until: Enter the last day of class. NOTE: You can delete class sessions that fall on university breaks from the Attendance activity screen.
- Click Add at the bottom of the screen and your attendance sessions will be built.
Take attendance
From the course homepage (with Editing turned off), click the Attendance activity.
You can view All sessions, All past sessions, or filter by Months, Weeks, or Days with the buttons at the top right.
Click the gear icon to edit the properties of the session. Click the trashcan icon to delete the attendance activity for a session that will not meet, as when there is a university break.
To take attendance during (or after) a class meeting, click the forward arrow for the session.
The list of students is displayed. Note if there are more than 50 students in the session, there will be more than one screen for the student list: in the upper right, change the dropdown with 50 to Do not use paging to display the full student list on one screen. Otherwise, click the arrows beside the Page # of # field to move through the screens. Change Sorted list to Sorted grid to display student pictures prominently (max 50 students per screen).
A shortcut for taking attendance is to click the letter P at the top to mark everyone Present. Then change the mark for any late or absent students. Use the Remarks column to make notes that are visible to the teacher and the individual student, such as the reason for an excused absence.
Click Save attendance button at the bottom of the screen.
The forward arrow turns to a green arrow when attendance has been taken for a session. To edit the attendance, click the green arrow for that session.
Click the Add session tab to insert a meeting, such as a class event that meets outside the regular schedule.
The Report tab provides an aggregated visual record to the teacher about class attendance, as well as summaries for individual students: click on student name in the Attendance report.
From the Export tab specify the options to export attendance data to a file and download, then click OK at the bottom of the screen.
Take attendance from the AsULearn mobile app
Attendance can now be taken directly from the AsULearn mobile app. Currently only sessions that started in the last 6 hours and 1 day in the future will be available (this setting can be expanded, so please let us know if more sessions would be helpful).
Browse to the attendance activity in the course from within the mobile app.
Click the Submit attendance button below the desired session.
Select the desired default status under Set status for to set the status for all students.
Set the desired status for individual students under their name.
Click the Submit attendance button at the bottom to save and record.
Configure attendance warnings
Warnings thresholds affect the absentee report and allow students and third parties to be notified. If more than one warning is triggered at exactly the same time, only the warning with the lower warning threshold will be sent.
From the attendance activity, go to the Warnings set tab and click the Add warning button.
Configure the settings as desired:
- Warn if percentage falls under: Warnings are triggered if a student's overall percentage for this attendance activity falls below this amount.
- Number of sessions taken before warning: Set the number of sessions that should be taken for a student before the warning should be triggered.
- Maximum number of e-mail warnings: Set the number of times a student should receive the e-mail warning for this session.
- Email user: If enabled, an e-mail will be sent to the student.
- Email subject: This setting defaults to "Attendance warning", but it is customizable.
- Email content: Default message content is configured, but can also be customized. Wildcard options are available from the help icon next to the field.
- Notify other users: Select other users with permission to view attendance reports to receive the notification.
Click the Add button to save the warning set.