Taking Attendance with Seating Charts

Summary

A quick way to take attendance with the Seating Chart is to first mark All Students Present for the current class. Then change the one or two who are not present to Absent, where you can choose "Unexcused Absence" or "Excused Absence".

Body

Overview

Once a recurring calendar event has been created, instructors can open the event for the current day and record students as Present, Excused Absence or Unexcused Absence. An advantage of using a Seating Chart for tracking attendance is the option to add a comment about the absence. Seating charts are no associated with the course gradebook.

Instructions

Step 1. Set All Students Present

A quick way to take attendance with the Seating Chart is to first set All [Students] Present for the current date's class and then change the status of the one or two students who are not present to absent.

Navigate to the Calendar widget on the course homepage.
Select the date on the calendar for which you want to take attendance.
Select the "View Seating Chart" button.
Select the "More Actions" drop down menu and then choose "Set All Present", as shown in Figure 1 below. The box for each student marked present should now be blue.

Figure 1. Set All [Students] Present

Set Students Present, Absent

Step 2. Update attendance for absent students.

Select the box for the absent student (student box should turn white)
Select the pencil icon next to Present and choose Excused Absence (student box turns grey and has a yellow dot next to the blue person icon) or Unexcused Absence (student box turns grey and has a red dot next to the blue person icon)
Add a comment, such as "car trouble, flu, family death,etc."
Repeat steps 1-3 for each student who is absent. Once attendance for the day is complete, select the "Set Session Completed" button.