1) What is Roll Call Attendance? Roll Call Attendance is an external app available in Canvas used for taking attendance. Within the Attendance tool, you mark students as absent, late, or present and the Attendance tool automatically calculates an overall grade or percentage in your Gradebook based on the number of classes the student was present, absent, and late for.

2) What should I know about Attendance before using it?

Attendance is finicky and doesn't like to be "messed with" or changed once it's enabled. Be sure to read all the instructions below before you start using the Roll Call Attendance feature and contact Christine Iannicelli if you have any questions.
To avoid Attendance calculation errors, never delete, rename, or unpublish the Attendance assignment once you've enabled it.
Students do not see the Attendance link that you see on the left-hand navigation menu, but they do see their grades in the Grades section. I highly recommend you Mute the Roll Call Attendance column in your Gradebook until you are sure it's reflective of the student's actual grade.

[Explanation: Because it displays an overall percentage grade, a student who was present the first day of class and absent the second day will automatically get a 50% because they earned 100% for the first day and 0% for the second day. This can cause panic in students so leaving the assignment muted until you have a few classes in there is best. You can even leave it muted indefinitely and set it to not affect the final grade. This allows you to just use Roll Call Attendance for your own attendance tracking. You can then create a separate assignment called Attendance and put the students' actual attendance grade in there. See Question #6 for more information on how to do this.]

3) How do I enable the Attendance feature?

Go to your course and click on Settings.
Click on the Navigation tab.
Click on the Gear icon next to Attendance and choose Enable.
Click Save.

4) How do I determine how many points students receive for coming late to class?

Click on Attendance.
Click on the Gear icon in the right-hand corner [1].
Choose Roll Call Settings [2].

Move the slider bar to the correct percentage for coming late to class.

5) How do I set up how many points Attendance is worth?

Attendance will automatically create an assignment in your Assignments section once you take roll for at least one student. Once you see it in your Assignments section, change the point value for the assignment. If you are using weighted assignments, you will also want to specify the percentage value that the Roll Call Attendance assignment group is worth.

Note: If you adjust the Attendance point value at some point in the middle of the semester, you need to go to the Attendance section and click the "Unmark All" button for the present day. That adjusts the app's settings so that the Gradebook is now updated with the new information.

6) How do I make Attendance an assignment that does not affect the final grade?

7) How do I take attendance using Roll Call Attendance tool?

Click on Attendance.
Navigate to the specific date on the right-hand side (you can go backwards or forwards).
Click on the circle next to the student's name once [1]. That will give them a green checkmark, indicating they were present. Click the circle again to give them a red X, indicating they were absent. Click the circle a third time to give them an orange checkmark, indicating they were late.
You can also mark everyone as present [2] and then edit the individual students who were absent or late to save time.
Repeat these steps for each day they were in class. The Roll Call Attendance column in the Gradebook will update every time you take roll call in the Attendance tool.

8) What do my students see? Students will see their overall attendance grade in the Grades section (unless you have muted the assignment). If they click on the assignment name, they will see the last time their attendance grade was calculated [1] and an overview of their attendance grades [2-4].

Unfortunately, instructors don’t get to see this. They have to run an attendance report to see individual details about each student’s attendance grade. See Question #9 for more information.

9) How do I run attendance reports?

Click on Attendance.
Click on the Gear icon in the right-hand corner [1].
Choose Attendance Report [2].

Enter in the dates you would like to receive the report on and your email address.
Canvas will email you a CSV file of the attendance report.

10) I've decided I don't like Roll Call Attendance. How do I disable it? Roll Call Attendance doesn't allow you to unpublish the assignment once you take roll for at least one student. However, you can remove Attendance from the Gradebook to stop using it for grading purposes by following the instructions below:

Go to Assignments.
Click on the Roll Call Attendance assignment title.
Click on Edit.
In the "Display Grade as" drop-down menu, change it to "Not Graded".
Click Save.

Note: Once you have changed the assignment type to "Not Graded", you cannot change it back to a graded assignment.