Roll Call Attendance tool allows you to take and to grade attendance in Canvas. The Roll Call Attendance will be added as an Assignment to the Gradebook after you take attendance for the first time. By default, the attendance assignment is worth 100 points and late counts as 80%. Students do not see Attendance in course navigation.

(If you do not see the Attendance tab on the course navigation, go to Settings, select Navigation tab. Now locate Attendance and either click the 3 dots to 'Enable" or drag/drop Attendance to the top panel)

How do I edit the Roll Call Attendance assignment?

How do I take roll call using the Attendance tool?


How to have the Gradebook count number of absences

  1. Go Settings and Course Details scroll to
  2. Click the checkbox to “Enable course grade scheme” then click on “view grading scheme”
  3. Once in the View Grading Scheme screen click on “manage grading schemes” at the bottom
  4. Once on the Manage screen click on “+Add grading scheme”
    Note: This example is based on 32 class meetings (2x week for 16 week) sessions, yours may vary.

Be sure to un-check “Enable course grade scheme” after you have set up your Attendance grading schema.


attendance-grading-schema

Setting the “Roll Call attendance” assignment to use new grading schema:

  • Take attendance as you would the first time.
  • Number of points equal to class meetings (Important to determine the scheme points)
  • Set in a separate group (for ease only)
  • Display Grade as- set to GPA Scale
  • Click on View the grading scheme
  • Choose the correct grading scheme from the list ( the default course one will be automatically displayed)
  • Click on “use this grading standard”
  • Click done in the lower right
  • Go back to the attendance section of the course, and check mark all here for every class meeting to set the students at 0 absences.
  • After this each time a student is marked absent the grade book will mark one in the grade book. i.e. student 1 has 5 absences, student 2 3 absences and so on

Canvas lets you run “Attendance Reports” for your course that you can download (sends to email) and open in Excel. When email is received, click link (it is a very long link) and select Open in Excel

attendanceemail


Excel Spreadsheet
You can set up and use a Pivot Table in Excel that quickly gives you the detail you need in an understandable format in just “three” steps.

  1. Select (highlight) range that includes column heading/detail for Student, Class Date, and Attendance
  2. Select from the Menu ribbon, Insert, Pivot Table (don’t need to change any defaults) and click OK. A new sheet opens and displays the empty Pivot Table with the selected columns to the right.
excel-attendance
Drag the following fields (column names) to the Rows and Value boxes
  • Select and drag Student Name field down to Rows
  • Select and drag Attendance field to Rows (under Student Name) and finally
  • Select and drag the Attendance field (again) to Value
    (Note: Even though the Class Date is not selected it is needed to compile information)
  1. The worksheet now displays each student with the count of absences, late, and present


excel-pivot-table

Need to see more detail on a particular student? Go to “Filter” on the imported sheet to display specifics on the student from the “raw data” sheet.
Select the original sheet displaying data, select Data from the Menu ribbon and click “Filter”. Each column now shows a down arrow where you can select what you want to filter. Click Select All to remove the check mark and then you can scroll and select (check) student name for detail\

excel-pivot-data