Instructors often want to record student attendance during class or discussion sections. Canvas has an attendance activity where instructors can record student attendance for a grade (they do not currently support students submitting their own attendance). This page walks you through:
- Options for instructor taking attendance
- Options for students taking attendance
Option 1: Canvas' Attendance Tool: Canvas supports an LTI Attendance tool that can allows instructors or TAs to record student attendance for each day. Attendance marks include: present, late, absent. and unmarked (excused). The tool automatically adds Attendance as an assignment worth 100 points in the gradebook. Note: there are limited settings that can be changed with this tool (for example, additional status' cannot be added, no drop the lowest, challenges with changing the maximum points, activity cannot be renamed). More information about Canvas' Attendance Tool can be found here: Instructor Guide: Attendance (Roll Call). LSIT recommends reading through the help article or scheduling a consultation to understand the limitations of this tool before adding it to the course.
Option 2: Record Grades offline & Entered into Canvas: Attendance can recorded offline (outside of Canvas) for the quarter. At the end of the term, the instructor can create an assignment with Submission type set to "No Submission". Final attendance grades can be manually entered or imported.
Option 1: iClicker cloud - iClicker Cloud allows instructors to take student attendance and ask students questions and get real-time responses during class. UCSB has an institutional license for iClicker cloud, making it free for students and instructors to use on their mobile devices or computers. More information about iClicker can be found here: iClicker Cloud in Canvas. Please reach out to help@id.ucsb.edu if you have any questions on setting up or using iClicker Cloud.
Option 2: Set up Daily Canvas Quizzes - Instructors can set up a Quiz in Canvas for each lecture they wish to record attendance. During lecture, the instructor can provide students with a password that students can enter to gain access to the quiz. 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. More information about how to download and edit these attendance quizzes can be found here: Lecture Attendance Quizzes