When to Use?
Many instructors who teach face-to-face and blended courses use Attendance as part of their students' overall grades. For each class meeting, you can mark whether a student is Present, Late, Absent, or Excused. The attendance records for each student appear in a single column next to other grades. On the Attendance page, profile pictures appear so you can easily identify students. You can use Attendance as part of grade calculations just as you can for an assignment grade column.
Procedure
How to Access Attendance
There are two ways to access the Attendance in your Blackboard course: through the Details & Actions Panel and through the Gradebook. When you access the attendance feature for the first time, you decide if you want to add Attendance to your course Gradebook.
1. Access your course Attendance using one of the following ways:
- On your Course Content page, select Attendance/Mark Attendance located within the Details and Actions panel on the left-hand side of the screen.
- Navigate to your course Gradebook tab and select the plus sign (+) wherever you want to add the item and select Add Attendance.
- NOTE: Only use this method if you have not set up Attendance in the course before. After Attendance has been set up, a column will appear in the Gradebook.
How to Setup Attendance
1. On the Attendance page, select Add Attendance to open the Settings panel.
2. From within the Attendance Settings panel:
- You can change the default settings for the grade display and for Late in the Grading Schema.
- You can choose whether to include Excused in calculations.
- At this time, you cannot change the percentages for Present, Absent, and Excused. Excused counts as Present for scoring purposes.
3. By default, when you open Attendance, you'll see the Meeting view for the current day. In the Overall view, you can view several meetings and see overall course statistics. You can mark attendance from either view.
- In the Meeting view, you can mark each student's attendance. You can also use the menu in a Status heading to mark all students Present or Absent. Then, you can change individual students' statuses as needed. Your work is saved as you go.
- In the Overall view, in addition to marking attendance, you can view attendance history, and create, edit, and delete meetings.
4. Save your settings or close the panel if you don't want to make changes. An Attendance column appears in the Gradebook.
5. At any time, you can change the schema in the Settings panel, save it, and then refresh the page. You'll see your newly selected schema reflected in the grade pills on the Attendance page in the Overall view.
See also: Blackboard: Attendance