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Setting up Attendance in a Course

Updated

Brightspace offers an attendance tracking feature, allowing you to monitor student participation. While this tool does not directly link to the gradebook, you can incorporate attendance into your grading by creating a gradebook item and manually entering grades to the gradebook item.

 

  1. To set up the attendance tracker, navigate to your course and proceed one of two ways:
    • Click More from the course navbar, then select Attendance from the drop-down menu, or
    • Click Course Admin from the course navbar, then select the Attendance option under the "Learner Management" heading.
  2. From the "Attendance Register" page, initiate the tracker by selecting the New Register button.
  3. From the “New Register” page, enter a name, and a description if needed. Select Default with Authorized Absent and Late from the attendance scheme drop-down menu.

  4. The grade scheme details are are available below for reference.

    SymbolStatus Full NameAssigned
    PPresent100%
    AAbsent0
    AAAuthorized Absent 
    LLate50%
  5. Set your cause for concern percentage threshold, which determines when attendance issues should be flagged.
  6. To ensure students can view their attendance, select Allow users to view this attendance register under the "Visibility" section. Then, within the "Users" section, click the Include all users in the course radio button.
  7. Within the "Sessions" section, add entries for each week the course is scheduled to meet. To add more sessions, click +Add Sessions. You can specify an exact number of sessions to add by entering a value in the field to the right. Click the Save button and close.
  8. The new attendance register will appear. To record attendance, click the name of the tracker created.
  9. From the “Attendance Data” page, select the pencil calendar icon to the right of the session name, which opens the “Set Attendance Data” page.

  10. Record student attendance by updating the status with either:

    • P  (Present)
    • A  (Absent)
    • AA  (Authorized Absent)
    • L  (Late)

  11. The course now includes attendance tracking.
     

    Important Note: Students cannot record their own attendance. Attendance must be entered manually by the instructor in Brightspace.