USING NEXUS TO TRACK ATTENDANCE
The Attendance activity is designed for teachers to be able to take attendance during class, and for students to be able to view their own attendance record. A teacher can mark the attendance status (configurable) of a student or it can be setup so that the students can mark their own attendance.. The Attendance activity can generate reports for either the entire class or for individual students. Students may also see their own attendance record if the activity is not hidden.
An Attendance activity can be added to a course in the same way as any other activity once you add the activity block.
Loading the Attendance Block
First, you'll need to add the Attendance Block to your side bar.
Go to your Nexus course and turn editing on by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right corner and selecting <Turn editing on> from the drop down menu.
In the left sidebar menu, scroll down all the way to the bottom and click on <Add a block>. In the pop-up window, click on <Attendance> to add the block.
The Attendance Block can only work with an Attendance Activity so you’ll need to add the activity to your course.
To add the activity, click on the <+Add an activity or resource> link in your preferred section. In the pop-up window, select <Attendance>.
In the “Adding a new Attendance” screen, you can add a description and edit the grade category, etc. When you’re done, click on the <Save and display> button.
Adjusting the settings.
To edit the settings, click on <Attendance> in your course outline. You can see that I’ve put Attendance in my General Section at the top.
Click on the Status set tab and you are presented with acronyms, attendance status descriptions, and grade (points) to assign.
By default, the status descriptions are PLEA: "Present", "Late", "Excused", and “Absent". You can change any of these status descriptions or add additional ones.
Available for students (minutes) lets you decide how many minutes you want attendance to be available to students after the session starts if students are marking their own attendance.
You can see that I’ve selected a button in the Absent line so that if the student does not mark anything they are automatically marked Absent.
Be sure to click on the <Update> button at the bottom to save your settings.
Adding Sessions
Click on the <Add session> tab across the top.
Add the date and time for your first session, keeping in mind that the time is set to 24-hr time. In this example, the class session is Tuesday, Sept 12, 123:50pm–1:45pm.
If you want to add multiple sessions, fill out the single session as your first session and then open the <Multiple sessions> section and fill in the information. The following example shows sessions repeating every Tuesday and Thursday until November 19.
In the Student Recording section, you can decide to allow students to record their own attendance, or choose to let Nexus to automatically mark them present once they access the course during the given session times.
If you allow students to record their own attendance, you have a few more options to decide.
Check the box to allow students to record their own attendance and choose an option from the dropdown box.
Automatic marking
Yes: Students will be automatically marked depending on their first access to the course.
Unmarked at end of session: any students who have not marked their attendance will be set to the unmarked status selected (usually set to Absent in settings).
Student password
You can enter a password to be used for the session, have Nexus generate a random password, and/or have Nexus generate a QR code. This information will need to be displayed at the beginning of each session so the student can enter the information to mark their attendance.
QR Code
Nexus can create a unique QR Code for each class session. When the student scans the displayed code they will be taken directly to Nexus and so they can mark their attendance for that session.
Don't forget to click on the <Add> button at the bottom to save your changes!
For Each Session
What the Teacher Must Do
Display the current password and/or QR code on the projection screen.
Click on Attendance in your course outline to get to the Attendance for the course screen.
For the specific course session, click on the password icon on the right.
If you’ve chosen just a password, the icon will look like a key.
The unique code, either just the password or the QR code, will open in a separate tab in your browser. Display this code on the projection screen.
What the Student Must Do
They will see Attendance in their course outline. When they click on Attendance, they will need to click on the link for Submit attendance for that class session.
Enter the correct passcode in the text box, select their status (Present, Late, Excused, or Absent), and then <Save Changes>.
Once they've saved their changes, they’ll see a message that their attendance has been recorded and they can return to their course by clicking on the name of the course in the main menu across the top.
If you’re using a QR code, the student will need to scan the code with QR Scan app on their mobile device and they will be taken directly to the password entry screen.
There are lots of free QR Code Scan apps available for either Apple or Android devices and any of them should work.
Once the student has submitted their attendance, they can click on the Attendance and then Attendance Report in their main menu to see their attendance results.
What the Teacher Can See
Click on <Report> in the Attendance Block.
What you’ll see is a report for each student, both for each session and an accumulative point sum and percentage. The points/grades will be recorded in the Nexus Gradebook.
To see and/or print document as a PDF, click on the ink to the file in the right sidebar to open the PDF file.
Find out more about the Attendance Block here: https://docs.moodle.org/37/en/Attendance_activity