Attendance (Roll Call) Tips

Attendance (Roll Call) tool allows instructors to record their students' attendance and automatically adds a "Roll Call Attendance" column to the Gradebook.

The Attendance Tool is hidden by default and must be enabled

To add a hidden tool to your course navigation menu:

In your course navigation menu, click Settings.
On the Navigation tab, in the list of hidden tools (under "Drag items here to hide them from students"), find the desired tool, and then click the corresponding Settings (gear) icon.
Select Enable and, if desired, drag and drop the enabled tool to change its position in the tool list.
Click Save.

Setting up Roll Call Attendance

Make sure your course is Published. Some of the features won't work unless the course is published.
The Roll Call Attendance tool is triggered the first time you take attendance in Canvas. After the first Roll Call, an assignment automatically appears in the Assignments index, with a default value of 100 points. The tool displays and tracks a % of the attendance grade.
Once attendance is taken for the first time, point values can be adjusted.
All students in the People tab, along with their profile pictures, are automatically added to the Roll Call assignment.

Do not rename or remove the assignment named Roll Call Attendance

The Attendance tool will only send grades to the item named "Roll Call Attendance". If an item by this name does not exist, Canvas will create a new assignment and gradebook column named "Roll Call Attendance".

Do not set the point value if you want it to be ungraded

If you wish to use the attendance tool but don't want to affect students' grades, it's better to explicitly make the "Roll Call Attendance" assignment ungraded than to change the point value to zero. If you set the point value to zero, the assignment will still appear in the gradebook, but if you make it ungraded, it will not. To make the assignment ungraded:

In the Assignments tool, click Roll Call Attendance.
In the top right, click Edit.
Check the box next to Do not count this assignment towards the final grade.
Click Save.

How to take Roll Call

In the List View, you can take attendance by toggling the correct mark next to each student's name. Click the attendance mark until you arrive at the desired mark:

To mark the student as present and on time, click one time (green check mark icon).
To mark the student as not present, click two times (red X icon).
To mark the student as late, click three times (orange clock icon).
To unmark the attendance status, leave the button as the default (gray no symbol icon). The unmarked attendance status also indicates an excused absence.

You can also take attendance by clicking the Mark All Present button.

If you need to start over or clear all attendance entries, click the Unmark All button.

Currently, you can only view Roll Call on a day-by-day basis. To view additional dates you can run an attendance report for your course.

The Roll Call Attendance tool will only calculate grades in the gradebook out of the total number of days roll has been taken.

What does the student see?

Students cannot access the Attendance tool; only instructors have the ability to take attendance. However, students can see the Attendance assignment in the Assignments page and view their attendance report as part of the Roll Call Attendance submission details page. If you are using attendance for grading, students can also view their attendance grade in the Grades page.

Students can only see their attendance grade % and not the details of their attendance record.

Students receive a grade change notification from Canvas every time you take roll. To prevent this from happening, you can hide the Roll Call Attendance assignment. Remember to unhide the assignment at the end of the semester.

If you haven't taken attendance yet, use the Manual Grade Policy to hide the grades
If you have already taken attendance, use the Hide Grade feature to hide grades

Updated 9/1/23