Understanding Attendance Tracking

Generating Attendance Rosters

After you schedule classes and enroll students, you can create attendance rosters by using either the Class Attendance page or the Attendance Roster Generator page. Through the Class Attendance page, you can create attendance rosters for one class meeting or for all class meetings within a single scheduled class. Through the Attendance Roster Generator page, you can create attendance rosters for all scheduled classes or for a selection of scheduled classes, within a term.

Each class meeting has its own roster, which comprises the student name and ID, term, session, class section, meeting pattern, attendance date, attendance type, contact hours, and each student's attendance record. The attendance type and the type of student attendance data that you can track are defined on the Course Catalog - Component page. You can use any of these three pages to access the attendance rosters that you generate—each page offers both a different view and a different method of access.

When you generate attendance rosters, the system creates a roster for every scheduled class meeting within your processing parameters and creates a template (a data entry page where you can enter attendance detail for each student) for each class meeting date. You can add new templates, thus adding attendance rosters for class meetings that are not officially scheduled (for example, a field trip to the observatory). For each class meeting, you can view student attendance details. If necessary, you can insert new rows for students who are not formally enrolled in the class (for example, a student who is participating in the class and planning to enroll if space on the waiting list becomes available).

With either attendance roster generation process (batch or online), you can populate your attendance rosters either by downloading from student enrollment (select the Populate from Student Enroll check box) or by building your attendance rosters from scratch (clear the Populate from Student Enroll check box). If you populate your attendance rosters by downloading from student enrollment, the system populates each roster with student names and IDs. If you choose to build an attendance roster, generate the attendance rosters and the system creates blank templates for each class meeting. Each template has the class attendance date and contact hours, based on the class meeting pattern in the schedule of classes and the class meeting attendance type that your institution uses. You can then use the Class Attendance page to scroll through the class meeting dates, select the specific class meeting dates for which to generate attendance rosters, and populate each of these specific class meeting rosters from student enrollment by clicking the Create button that corresponds to each of these class meetings. You can also enter student IDs by using the Class Attendance page, the Class Attendance By Template page, or the Student Attendance page. Changes that you make on any of these pages are immediately visible in all three components.

After you generate attendance rosters, you can use the Class Attendance page, the Class Attendance By Template page, and the Student Attendance page to track student attendance. Each page provides you with a different view and a different method of access.