Participation and Attendance Tracking

The following technologies can assist you with tracking your students’ attendance and/or participation throughout the semester.

Poll Everywhere

This technology allows you to track both attendance and participation at once. Create polls including multiple choice, competitions, word clouds, and open answer. Students are more engaged in class as they answer questions throughout the session, and you can use polls to encourage discussion or interact with a large class.

Students bring their own devices (phones, tablets, laptops) to class to participate. Students reply via their own devices through the Poll Everywhere website where they already have an account through the University. After class, faculty can export certain data to the Canvas gradebook. Poll Everywhere also records all participation.

To get started, sign up for one of our Teaching with Poll Everywhere workshops

Attendance (Roll Call)

Canvas has a built in feature in the left hand navigation called “Attendance”. This feature allows you to manually mark if each student on your roster is present, late, or absent. You can also set up a seating chart to help you quickly take attendance based on visual location. This feature creates a grade assignment which calculates a percentage (#attended / #total).

To use Attendance, click the menu item and authorize the use of Roll Call. You will now see your class roster, and a corresponding assignment in the gradebook. You can change the total point value in the gradebook to match your grading policy. Select the date of class on the upper right, and select the attendance status for each student. Alternately, select the date and the student’s desk location if using the seating chart for tracking.

If you need assistance, contact the 24/7 Canvas Hotline at 877-257-9780 or Chat.

Still want more?

You can also find additional resources on giving students grades and feedback, leading discussions, and working with students.