Attendance: Basics

Audience

Faculty

Question

How do I create/enter/view/export attendance from D2L?

Answer

The Attendance tool enables you to create registers and track attendance for activities within your course. You can track attendance for any number of activities and customize your registers to suit your needs.

Please Note: The Attendance tool can NOT be linked to the gradebook. If you wish to use attendance data for assessment purposes you will need to manually enter scores in the gradebook.

Create an Attendance Register

Create attendance registers to track attendance for your course-based activities such as daily class attendance, mandatory face-to-face sessions, or other activities.

  1. Select the Other Tools menu and then select Attendance
  2. On the main Attendance page, select New Register
  3. Enter a Name for your register
  4. [optional] Enter a Description
  5. Choose an Attendance Scheme from the Attendance Scheme drop-down list. The default scheme defines three possible attendance statuses; present, absent, and excused absence. The System Scheme has two options, present and absent.
  6. Enter a percentage in the Cause for Concern field. The Cause for Concern metric helps you track users that fail to meet your attendance requirements by placing a warning icon beside their names on the Attendance Data page.
  7. Select the check box to Allow users to view this attendance register
  8. Select the users that you want to include in your register. You can choose to include all users or specific groups or sections.
  9. Add one or more sessions for your register
      • Enter the first three session names, such as the dates the class will meet, and then select Save
        NOTE: After you save the first three sessions, you can add additional sessions
      • To add additional sessions: Enter a number into the Add sessions box, and then select Add Sessions
      • Enter a Name for each session
      • [optional] Enter a Description for each session
  10. Select Save

Screenshot of the Edit Register page

 

Enter Attendance Data

  1. From the main Attendance page, select the name of the attendance register

Screenshot of D2L attendance register

 

  1. Enter attendance data for your sessions by selecting the corresponding Enter Attendance Data icon on the Attendance Data page
  2. Use the Attendance Status drop-down lists to change the attendance status for your users. You can also select Set Status to set the same status for all users.
  3. Select Save

Screenshot of attendance register with student names

 

Tip: If the majority of students were present, set the status of all users to present, and then manually change the status for those who were absent or excused.

View Attendance Data

From the Attendance homepage, select the name of your register to access the Attendance Data page. This page displays all of the data that you have collected for your register, broken down by users and sessions.

Screenshot of Attendance data

Each row displays the user, the attendance status for each session, the summary of attendance statuses, and the user’s attendance percentage for the register. If you have set a Cause for Concern threshold, any user that is below your specified percentage will display a Cause for Concern icon beside their name in the % Attendance field.

Tip: To view the Attendance data for a single student, select the student’s name. This will open a new tab in your browser that displays that student’s data in a list. Be sure to close the tab when finished.

Email Students from the Attendance Data Page

  1. Select the box next to the name of the user(s) that you want to email from the list in the Attendance Data section
  2. Select​​​​​​​ Email
  3. Compose your new message
  4. Select​​​​​​​ Send

Tip: If you want to send an email to low-attendance students, sort the attendance data by the % Attendance (click the %Attendance column heading). This will bring all of the low-attendance students to the top of the list.

Export Attendance Data

You can Export the data for an Attendance register. The exported file can then be used to help you enter scores in the gradebook.

  1. Select​​​​​​​ Export All Data
  2. A window will pop up with a message stating, “Your file is ready to download”
  3. Select the link to the file
  4. Select Open with Microsoft Excel

Tip: You may want to delete the individual session columns, leaving only the student names and % Attendance and then use this file to enter scores into the Gradebook.

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