Whether you are starting from scratch or working with an attendance activity already created, using the attendance activity in a topic ideally consists of 5 stages, in a looped process.
Monitoring attendance in class is a measure of student engagement. It also allows students to take responsibility for their own learning. This is an active teaching strategy and can also contribute to learning analytics for the students in the topic.
1. Plan
The attendance activity in FLO allows a member of the teaching staff to take attendance during class, or for students to record their own attendance. The topic coordinator can create multiple sessions and can mark the attendance status as 'Present', 'Absent', 'Late' or 'Excused', or modify statuses to suit their needs. Reports are available for the entire class or individual students.
2. Build
You have planned your attendance activity. Now you are ready to set up your attendance activity.
Click Add an activity or resource to open the activity chooser
Click the Attendance icon
Name the attendance sheet (eg Tutorial Attendance)
Assign a grade type other than None to create an entry for this activity in the Gradebook. You are advised to select Point, not Scale, for the grade type. If you wish to use Scale, select Point as the grading method until all attendances are marked (ie all data is in the Gradebook), then change the grading type to Scale. Keep the grades hidden until you change to Scale (close the eye for this activity in the Gradebook), then release the grades. Students will still be able to view their attendance during the topic
To mark attendance for a group of tutorials, under Group mode select Visible groups. Under Grouping, select the appropriate option. If your topic has scheduled tutorials in the timetable, you should see an option starting with the topic code and ending with 'Tutorial' (for example, NURS1003_2018_NS1_Tutorial)
Click Save and display
Step 2: Add session(s)
Click the Addsession tab
There are two types of sessions: All students and Group of students. Ability to add different types depends on activity group mode (refer to step 6 under 'Create an attendance activity')
In group mode "No groups" you can add only All students sessions.
In group mode "Visible groups" you can add All students and Group of students sessions.
In group mode "Separate groups" you can add only Group of students sessions.
Note: If you want to link the sessions to the Student Management groups (for example, Tutorial or Practical), add your sessions using Group of students. This will also keep the list of students within the groups updated via the integration.
Click and hold the Ctrl key to select multiple groups.
Fill in details about the session you wish to record attendance for
To create a repeating series of sessions (eg weekly tutorials), open the Multiple sessions section, and tick 'Repeat the session above as follows'. Select the day the specific session repeats on (if a tutorial session this will most likely be one day per week), frequency (Repeat every) (again, if a tutorial session this will most likely be one day per week), and session end date (Repeat until):
Click Add
Repeat steps 1 to 5 to add sessions if required
Step 3: Set up grade acronym, description and points
By default, the status descriptions are Present, Excused, Late, Absent and the allocated points are 2, 1, 1, 0 respectively.
Click the Status set tab
To update an existing text/value, select the text box and enter a new text/value
To set up a new status, fill in the line starting with an * and click the Add button
Click Update
3. Test
Once you have set up the Attendance activity, ask your local eLearning support team to check it for you (especially if this is the first time you have set up this activity).
4. Administer
To administer your attendance activity, you can use a variety of functions (listed below).
To mark attendance by group (for example Tutorial group), select the dropdown list under Sessions
Click the Take attendance icon next to mark the session
Give each student a mark:
P (present) - worth 2 points E (excused) - worth 1 point L (late) - worth 1 point A (absent) - worth 0 point.
You can also enter remarks for each. These grades will be available in the gradebook.
If the activity is set to 'visible', students will be able to view their status and any remarks
Click Save attendance
Note: If you want Scale to be the Grade type setting, make sure that Point is selected as the grading method until all attendances are marked (ie all data is in the Gradebook), then change the grading type to Scale. Keep the grades hidden (close the eye for this activity in the Gradebook) until you change to Scale, then release the grades. Students will still be able to view their attendance record as the topic progresses.
Change a student's attendance record
In the attendance activity, click the Sessions tab
Locate the session you wish to alter, and click the green Change attendance icon.
Update the attendance record and click Save attendance
Edit sessions
In the attendance activity, click the Sessions tab
To edit a session, click the Edit session icon
To delete a session, click the Delete session icon
5. Review
How did your attendance activity go? Would you set up the activity differently next time? Talk to your colleagues and/or your local eLearning support team to get ideas for improvement.
Monitoring attendance in class is a measure of student engagement. It also allows students to take responsibility for their own learning. This is an active teaching strategy and can also contribute to learning analytics for the students in the topic.
