Online Attendance Feature in Canvas

The term “Online Attendance” could mean so many different things in different classes - does it mean that a student signed in to Canvas, that they attended a conference, or maybe that they submitted an assignment or quiz? Well, this very question was the reason that we hesitated to enable this feature when it was released on a global level earlier this fall. See, FSCJ is many things, but we are definitely not a one size fits all kind of school. Well, the new, more flexible option is now available and has been turned on for all instructors to explore - or decide not to use.

Setting Your Course’s Criteria for Online Attendance

Now that the option is available in Canvas, you can find the tool, its settings, and results in each course by accessing the New Analytics button on the right side of your course’s Home page. The first time that you set up the tool in each course, you’ll need to click the Settings button to select the criteria that work for you and your own course.

By default, the criteria for being marked as “attended” is that a student simply views a page in the course. However, instructors have the ability to select additional, or different, criteria as listed below. If a student meets ANY of the criteria selected below, for a given day, that student will be marked as "attended" for the day.

The options for criteria are:

• Student views a page in course (this is selected by default, but can be unselected)

• Student posts a new comment to an announcement or a discussion

• Student submits an assignment

• Student joins a Big Blue Button conference

• Student creates a page

• Student starts taking or submits a Quiz

As you’re deciding which criteria to set, consider that each course may be different, and the tool allows for each course to be set up differently. You may only have conferences in your Live Online courses, which may be a good indicator for attending the course. In other courses, logging in and submitting one assignment or quiz may be a better indicator.

Although this feature provides you with analytics that you could use for grading purposes, there is not a grade automatically assigned based on the criteria set.

If you’d like to explore the tool before determining if it will be helpful in your own courses, you can try this or any other feature in our Canvas beta instance (fscj.beta.instructure.com).