Taking attendance

There are many options for taking attendance including verbally, using a seating chart, or electronically using a Zoom poll, Top Hat, or Canvas Quizzes.

Taking attendance for federal student aid requirements

Reporting on attendance for the first two weeks of class is required for federal student financial aid.

"In the second week of the Fall and Spring term, the Office of the Registrar contacts class instructors to request that they verify which students listed on their class roster(s) are attending and identify those who have stopped attending.

In order to comply with federal student aid requirements, instructors are also asked to identify students who have never attended, including students who have dropped or withdrawn after the first week of classes or may still appear as enrolled in the class."

From the IU Bloomington Registrar

Attendance via Zoom

If you are holding class sessions on Zoom the easiest way to take attendance is running a Zoom Usage Report.

1. Navigate to zoom.iu.edu and click Log in to Zoom. 
   • If necessary, authenticate with your IU Login.
2. Click Reports in the left navigation.
3. Click the Usage.
4. Click the calendar icons next to "From" and "To" and choose the date or range for the class period(s).
5. Click the number in the "Participants" column for the class period you want to report on (based on the "Start Time" and "End Time").
6. Determine what information you want on the report with the Export with meeting data and Show unique users checkboxes, then click Export to download a CSV (spreadsheet) file.

Attendance for in-person

You should only take in-person attendance verbally, using a seating chart, or electronically.

Even in large classes, one of the easiest ways to take attendance is to call roll; you could even do this for your students attending via Zoom if you don't want to run a Usage Report.

In-person attendance beyond student aid requirements

Seating charts for in-person attendance

Creating seating charts is one of the easier ways to take ongoing attendance in an in-person course, even in high-enrollment courses. By comparing your seating chart to the filled seats in the classroom, you'll quickly be able to identify who is absent.

Taking attendance electronically

If you already use Zoom, Top Hat, or Canvas for interaction throughout your in-class sessions, you can leverage any of those technologies to take attendance. The process for each is essentially the same.

1. Create a poll/question before your class session.
2. Ask all of your students, in-person and online, to access the Zoom, Top Hat, or the Canvas site associated with that class session.
3. Verbally, tell your students the "answer" to the poll/question (a.k.a. the "password")
4. Leave the poll/question open for at least one minute to accommodate students navigating the app.
5. After class, identify present students by their correct answers to the question.

Resources

Zoom

• Create a Zoom poll
• Launch a Zoom poll
• Download Zoom poll results

Top Hat

• Create a Top Hat question
• View Top Hat results in the Gradebook
• Top Hat attendance tool

Canvas Quizzes

• Create a Canvas quiz
• How do I create a multiple choice quiz question?
• View Quiz results