Good morning,
By now, you’ve likely taken roll through Canvas’s Attendance portal—but did you notice the assignment that appeared on your Assignments page afterward? This assignment, Roll Call Attendance, can have unintended effects on your grading. Today, I’ll show you what you can do to make it so that this assignment doesn’t impact students’ grades.
While many folks use attendance as a part of participation, Roll Call Attendance doesn’t have much give in how that grade is calculated. Roll Call Attendance grades based on percentage of classes attended. If a student has missed two of five classes, they’ll have a 60% score calculated into their final grade. This doesn’t account for allowed absences or more flexible grading.
Roll Call Attendance also causes issues if you use points-based grading. Due to the default of 100 points for this assignment, you’ll want to verify how your students’ grades are being calculated. If you want to see the total points for a student, click on a student’s name in the gradebook, then “Grades” to see if the total points aren’t as expected:
Click on Grades…
…then scroll to the bottom to see the total points on the right. If it’s higher than expected, it might be Roll Call Attendance skewing the values.
So, how do you get rid of Roll Call Attendance? If you just delete it, it will reappear after you take roll again, so there are two options I recommend: setting it as not counting towards students’ final grade or making it “Not Graded.” The first option allows students to see their attendance total on the Grades page, with the percentage. The second removes students’ access from their attendance totals entirely.
To do either, go to “Assignments,” then look for the “Roll Call Attendance” assignment. Click the three dots to the right of the name, then “Edit.” This will open the assignment’s details page, where you can then click “More Options” to change the settings.
To make Roll Call Attendance not count towards students’ final grade, look for the checkbox that reads “Do not count this assignment towards the final grade.” Check this box, the final grades will recalculate without the assignment. Doing this is nondestructive, as you can always uncheck the box to add it back to final grade calculations.
To remove the Roll Call Attendance assignment entirely from grading, look for the drop-down menu beside “Display Grade as,” then change to “Not Graded.” You’ll still see the Roll Call Attendance assignment, as it can’t be deleted, but it will be invisible to students. As far as I’m aware, you can’t add it back to being graded through the external tool once you’ve done this. You’ll need to create a participation assignment instead to manually enter grades.
In making Roll Call Attendance ungraded, students won’t be able to see their attendance records. Note that they can’t see the Attendance page, as it’s one of the hidden pages I mentioned in a previous newsletter. All said, however, I feel the adjustment to grading can be worth the trade-off. If Roll Call Attendance is inaccurate to how you grade participation, it’s not worth stressing students out.
Here is what it looks like for a student to visit Grades, then click “Roll Call Attendance” to view attendance when the option is selected to not count towards final grade:
As with any Canvas adjustments, it’s imperative you explain things to students. Either way you approach Roll Call Attendance can work, but if you aren’t using it for grading, but sure to remove it/uncheck it so that students can get an accurate picture of how they are being assessed. This helps everybody!
If you would like to know more about how to export attendance records from the Attendance page as a spreadsheet to manually input participation grades, particularly closer to midterms, please reach out. Otherwise, have a great rest of the week!
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