Video Resources
Overview
The Attendance module allows instructors to take attendance for course meetings as well as create early alerts directly from the course section roster screen.
The Attendance module can be accessed by clicking the "Attendance" button on the top navigation bar. Doing so will take the user to the attendance dashboard.
- Attendance is taken on course section meetings.
- Course Section meetings import from the SIS on the Course Section Schedule Element (CSSE) data feed.
- If a course section imports without a meeting schedule on the CSSE data feed, or imports with a schedule that does not have any meetings, this must first be fixed in the data extract definitions so that an instructor will be able to take attendance on a course meeting(s).
On this screen, the user will see their in-flight course sections (bottom right) as well as additional information and statistics around the quantity of their attendance taking.
Alternatively, on the Student Success & Engagement home screen, a panel is shown in the top left corner that contains links to the in-flight courses being taught by the user. Clicking on these links will take the user to the roster/attendance page for that course section.
Clicking on the course section will take the user to the roster page for that course section:
Here, instructors can see the course section meetings that are missing attendance information as well as take attendance for any course section meeting. The drop down menu allows for the correct course section meeting to be selected.
To take attendance, the user selects the appropriate course section meeting and then clicks the appropriate attendance status for each student. The action menu can be used to send a message to the student, to create an early alert for the student or to clear the attendance record for the student. The "Mark Remaining Present" button will automatically mark everyone present who has not already been assigned an attendance status.
Under the attendance buttons (Present, Tardy, Absent and Excused), indicators are shown representing the last 5 meetings' attendance. A red "X" means that the student was absent for that meeting, a green "check mark" means that they were present, a yellow "clock" symbol means that they were tardy, a "blue document" indicates an excused absence and a gray question mark means that attendance was not taken.
Additionally, the students attendance record for this course section is shown. These indicate the students' total attendance record for the course section for each status.
Meeting Cancellation
If there is a course section meeting that appears in the list yet was canceled or otherwise did not meet due to weather or a holiday, for example, you may click the "Cancel Meeting" button. For more information about meeting cancellation, click here.
Online Attendance
Many times, by an institutions' definition, an online course section does not have an actual meeting schedule so the course section meetings do not display on the Instructor's course roster "by design".
In this case, in order for online attendance records entered in SS&E or imported from the SIS to display in SS&E on the Course Roster and the Student Courses tab, there must first be a course section schedule associated with the course section. This schedule is what defines the dates and times that the course section is scheduled to meet, for which attendance records are being recorded.
- Click here to learn more about Attendance Configuration.
- Click here to learn how the course roster data imports into SS&E.
If an online course section does not have a schedule displayed in Course Section Administration, then a schedule must be assigned in the SIS and imported into SS&E on the Course Section Schedule Element data feed.
A missing course section schedule can also be seen by impersonating the instructor and looking at the Course Section from their Courses tab. If the course section meeting schedule dropdown is missing from the top right this means that there is no schedule associated with the course section.
If the course section schedule is missing then there are no valid meeting dates for attendance records to be associated with, so even if the attendance records exist in Transcript Course Attendance, they will not display in SS&E.
- Click here to view the SIS Data Import Definitions for all data feeds. Search for Course Section Schedule Element to see what course section schedule data imports from the SIS.
If the online course section schedule exists, and attendance records are missing on the student's Courses tab, the next step is to check if the online attendance records are included in the Transcript Course Attendance data extract.
- Click here to learn how to view a data extract/JSON file within SS&E.
If the attendance data is missing from the Transcript Course Attendance data extract, click here for instructions on how to troubleshoot and identify the source of the missing data. To fix this, first confirm that the missing data is included in the CSV/SIS and then find why the data extract definitions or accelerate configuration is filtering out online attendance resulting in this data being excluded from the data extract .Json file.
In many cases, a support plan or Professional Services engagement may be needed to help configure the data extract queries and/or Informer reports and/or the SIS if something changed and it is not clear why online attendance data is missing since this is unique at each institution.