Desire Learn Overview

Quickguide: The Attendance Tool

The Attendance tool allows you to track your students attendance in class sessions. You can create separate attendance registers for each course section if you have had those sections combined into one Desire2Learn course site. The attendance register will tell you a students attendance percentage, but note that there is no integration with the Desire2Learn Grades tool.

How to Access the Attendance Tool

Click Attendance on your course navigation bar.

In This Guide
Creating an Attendance Register Recording Attendance Creating a New Attendance Scheme

Creating an Attendance Register

The attendance register is the list of class sessions. For a course site with multiple sections, you can set up separate registers for each section or one register for all of them. 1. Click Attendance in your navbar. 2. Click New Register (Figure 1). 3. Enter a name for your register. This could be the name of the course or section. Note: If you dont want students to see their attendance record, you can deselect Allow users to view this attendance register. 4. Under the Users heading, select which students should be included in the register. Keep Include all users in the course selected if the course only has one section or all sections have the same class session dates. If you have multiple sections in the same course, select Include all users in the
Figure 1

Figure 2

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Desire2Learn Quickguide: The Attendance Tool (Page 2 of 3)

following groups/sections. Then select Add Groups/Sections to select the section you want to use this register for and click Add. 5. Under the Session Name heading, enter the dates of the first three class sessions. 6. In the Add Sessions box, enter the number of rows that need to be added for all the class sessions and click Add Sessions (Figure 2). For example, if you have twenty class sessions, enter 17. 7. Enter the rest of the session names in the new Session Name fields (Figure 3). 8. Click Save. Note: Repeat this process to create multiple attendance registers for multiple sections of your course.
Figure 4

Recording Attendance

1. From the Attendence Registers page, click the name of the class register you created. 2. Click the (Figure 4). Enter Attendance icon

Figure 5

3. Use the drop-down menus to set attendance for each student: P for present or A for absent (Figure 5). 4. Click Save.

Set Attendance for All Students

1. At the top of the screen, click Status for All (Figure 6). Set

Figure 6

2. In the Status drop-down menu, select P for present or A for absent. 3. Click Save. Note: As a time saver, you may want to use Set Status for All to set everyone as present and then use the drop-down menus to change individual students to A for Absent. Cumulative attendance percentages will appear on the right side of the table when you click the name of the register (Figure 7).
Figure 7

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Creating a New Attendance Scheme

You can create a new attendance schemes with more options than just P for present and A for absent. For example, you can add Late for half attendance credit. 1. From the Attendance Registers page, click Attendance Schemes on the left (Figure 8). 2. Click New Scheme (Figure 9). 3. Enter a name for your attendance scheme. 4. For each attendance status number, enter a symbol, a name, and an Assigned % (Figure 10). The symbol should be a letter, abbreviation, or short word to describe the status. The status name should describe the status. It can be the same as the symbol. The Assigned % should be the percent credit students should receive for that status. For example: 100 for Present, 50 for Late, or 0 for Absent. Note: To add more fields, click Add Statuses (Figure 11). To delete a field, click the icon under the Delete heading (Figure 12). 5. When you have finished, click Save. After you have created a new attendance scheme, you will be able to select it when you are creating an attendance register. Note: Do not change the scheme for a register you have already created or all data will be lost.
Figure 11 Figure 10 Figure 9

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