Introduction
Canvas’s Attendance tool creates an attendance register in your course that you can use to track whether students are present, absent, late, or excused for each class session. It also adds an assignment to your course and automatically calculates a grade for it based on data you enter into the attendance register.
Tip: Enabling the Attendance Tool
The Attendance tool is not enabled in Canvas courses by default. If you decide you want to use it after reviewing this article, send an email to atli@uclaextension.edu to request to have the Attendance tool added to your course.
Please note these details about how the Attendance tool works:
- Roll Call Attendance register: An Attendance link will appear in your course navigation menu once the Attendance tool has been enabled in your course. Only you (not your students) can see this link, which opens your course's attendance register.
- Roll Call Attendance assignment: After you record attendance for the first time, the Attendance tool creates an assignment in your course called "Roll Call Attendance." Note it has a couple of limitations:
- To avoid calculation errors, you should not delete, rename, or unpublish the Roll Call Attendance assignment.
- The Roll Call Attendance assignment is valued at 100 points by default. You can change this value or not include this assignment in students' overall grade—but be sure to follow Canvas's instructions if you make any changes.
- Student visibility: Students can see the Roll Call Attendance assignment and their score for it in the Grades area of your course, but they cannot see the Roll Call Attendance register.
Roll Call Attendance Register
To access your course's attendance register after the Attendance tool has been added to your course:
- In the course navigation menu, click Attendance. The "Roll Call" page will open.
- To record attendance, click the icon next to each student's name until it displays the status you want to record:
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- Green checkmark: present and on time
- Red X: absent
- Orange clock: late
- Gray circle with line: excused absence or attendance has not been recorded yet
Roll Call Attendance Assignment
The Roll Call Attendance assignment will not appear in the Assignments area of your course until you have recorded attendance for at least one student in the attendance register.
Note that Attendance tool generates a cumulative grade for this assignment, i.e., it continuously updates students' scores each time you record attendance.
By default, the Roll Call Attendance assignment is worth 100 points, and the Attendance tool calculates a score for each student based on the status you record for them in the attendance register:
- present and on time ( 100%)
- not present (0%)
- late (80%)
- excused absence (not counted/score dropped)
If you want to change the Roll Call Attendance assignment's points value or change the percentage it awards for "late," you can edit the Roll Call Attendance assignment.