One way that instructors can track and grade student attendance in Canvas is to utilize daily quizzes. At each course meeting, the instructor can provide students with a unique password (either verbally or on a board) for students to gain access to that day's quiz. There will be a separate quiz for each class session in which you want to track attendance.
To facilitate this process, UCSB has created an Attendance Quizzes module that can be downloaded from the Canvas Commons. The module contains either 20 or 30 graded surveys; each survey can be individually modified to enter in a unique session-specific password and quiz availability restrictions.
This article will cover:
- Default settings of the attendance quiz and the student view
- How to download the Attendance Quizzes module from the Canvas Commons
- How to edit a quiz to set lecture-specific password and availability information
- Best Practices and Recommendations
Default Settings of Quizzes
- Attendance quizzes are set up as graded surveys; students receive credit for their submission (regardless of the question or answer).
- Each quiz contains 1 question "Are you Present" with answer choice "Yes".
- Each quiz is worth 1 point
- If a student forgets to submit their attempt, the quiz will automatically submit after 30 minutes with any recorded responses.
Student accesses the attendance quiz from the course page and clicks "Take the Survey":
Student is prompted to enter the Access Code before they can take the survey:
The quiz is a short 1-question multiple choice question:
After submitting the quiz, student can see that they earned 1 point (out of 1) for today's attendance:
1. Click Commons from the global navigation menu
- The Canvas Commons is an item repository where anyone in the Canvas community can share and download Canvas materials such as pages, assignments, or modules. You can learn more about the Canvas Commons here: What is Canvas Commons?
2. Type "UCSB attendance quizzes" in the search bar and click on the desired UCSB Attendance Quizzes card (either 20 quizzes or 30 quizzes):
3. Click Import/Download on the right hand side:
4. A side-menu will appear on the right. Choose the course you want to import the Attendance quizzes module into and click Import into Course.
5. You should see a green banner at the top of the screen indicating that the import has started.
6. After a few minutes, you should see the Attendance Quizzes Module appear in the course selected in step 4.
- The individual quizzes should be modified with a session-specific password and quiz availability restrictions based on your course. See the next tab for instructions on how to do so.
- This module imports as unpublished (hidden from students) to allow the instructor to modify the quizzes. Be sure to publish the module (and appropriate attendance quizzes) before the class period through these steps here: How do I publish or unpublish a module as an instructor? (Note, publishing the module publishes all of the attendance quizzes. We recommend either setting the Available from/Until dates for all quizzes before the course begins or un-publishing the individual quizzes until the availability dates are set to avoid giving students access to the quizzes before the class period.)
1. From the Modules tab, click on the Quiz you want to edit.
- the Name of the quiz as displayed to students (optional, default is "Attendance #")
- The Score for that day's quiz (optional, default value is 1 point per quiz/day).
- The Access code/password for the individual session (recommended, default is a universal 4 character placeholder). This is the value you would need to supply to students for them to be able to enter the quiz.
- The Available from and Until date and time (recommended, default is blank). This allows you to set a block of time (such as the entire lecture or a specific portion of lecture) when you want students to be able to take the quiz
4. After making your changes, click Save (to keep hidden from students and publish at a later date) or Save & Publish (even if published, student's won't be able to access the quiz until the Available from time set above.)
- We recommend either setting the Available from/Until dates for all quizzes before the course begins or un-publishing the individual quizzes until the availability dates are set to avoid giving students access to the quizzes before the class period.
- You will want to enter zeros for students who do not take the quiz (are absent). You can set a default grade of 0 for each quiz through these steps here: How do I set a default grade for an assignment in the Gradebook?
- Attendance quizzes will be added to your course in an assignment group titled "Imported Assignments". You can create a new assignment group (titled "Attendance") or rename the current "Imported Assignments" assignment group through the steps here: How do I add an assignment group in a course?
- If you want to excuse a specific number of student absences (i.e., students are only required to attend 18 out of 20 lectures to earn full attendance points), once the attendance quizzes are in a group, you can apply a "drop the lowest" rule through these steps here: How do I create rules for an assignment group?
- If you want students to see their grades immediately, be sure that your course is set to an Automatic Posting Policy through these steps here: How do I select a grade posting policy for a course in the Gradebook?
- Students may want to download and log into the Canvas mobile app to take the attendance quiz from their phone.