Moodle has a tool you can use to track and grade (optional) attendance. This is a great tool to use if you are looking for an easy to use digital attendance tracker, you want a copy of your attendance records saved in a central location alongside student submissions and content in Moodle, or you want to associate a grade with class attendance.


Attendance icon in Moodle, three green silhouettes and one orange


Please Note: Using the Attendance tool in Moodle does not replace the need to report attendance in StormTrac! Attendance should still be recorded by the census date and grades should still be reported at the end of the course by visiting the Faculty tab in StormTrac. Learn how to report attendance and grades in StormTrac!


Add an Attendance Activity 

An Attendance activity can be added to a course in the same way as any other activity:

  1. Turn editing on
  2. Click 'Add an activity or resource'
  3. Select Attendance
  4. Input the details for your Attendance activity. For example, if you will be grading attendance be sure to click Grade, select "Points" and enter the maximum amount of points a student can earn.
  5. Then click "Save and Return to Course" or "Save and Display"


Multiple Attendance Logs: You may add as many Attendance instances as you like. If you have multiple, give each instance a name that indicates what it will be used for; for example, you could name one "Lecture Attendance" and the other "Lab Attendance". 

Groups: If you will be using groups in your course, set the Group mode accordingly, because even if groups exist in the course, you will not be able to use them within the Attendance activity if you select No groups. Using groups allows you to mark attendance for one group at a time. This is a great feature if your groups of students will be meeting at different times/locations. 


Setting Attendance status and grading options

Now it is time to set your attendance options. 

  1. Select your attendance activity and you will see a bar of tabs, the last of which is "Settings." 
  2. Select "Status set" and you are presented with acronyms, attendance status descriptions, and grade (points) to assign. By default, the status descriptions are "Present", "Absent", "Late", and "Excused".
  3. You may prefer to change the descriptions (for example, by changing "Late" to "Tardy"), change the way points are counted, or add new status descriptions. To do the latter, fill in the fifth line and click the Add button. 
  4. Finally, when you are done changing items on this page, be sure to click the Update button to register the changes.


Adding sessions

Next, it is time to add sessions. 

  1. To add class sections, click the Add session tab (second from left) at the top of the Attendance page. If you chose "No groups", or have not defined groups, then the Session type will be forced to "Common." If you have defined groups and have chosen to use them in your course's Attendance activity, then you will have the option to create sessions for a group or all students.
  2. You have two options for adding sessions: adding a single session or adding multiple sessions. The single session is self-explanatory as well as time-consuming to use when you have many class sessions, so we will go straight to the more useful option.
  3. Check the Create multiple sessions button. 
  4. Select the date and time for the first session you wish to add, followed by the duration of the session. 
  5. Then, enter the date for the last session you wish to add. 
  6. Since most classes do not meet seven days a week, select the checkboxes for days the class meets. 
  7. The final option, frequency, may look confusing but it is actually straightforward: if your class meets every week, as is typical, then you want a frequency of 1 week, which is the default. 
  8. Finally, select the Add button at the bottom of your screen to create your sessions. 


Taking attendance

Finally, we get to using the activity for its intended purpose. 

  1. Select the Attendance activity link you created in your course. 
  2. You can take attendance for a session by clicking on the green radio button on the session rectangle's right-hand side. Those sessions for which attendance has already been taken, do not have the green button. However, the description is a link that takes you to a screen for modifying the attendance record for that session.
  3. Note that when taking attendance, the column headings for attendance status are links. If you click one of these column headings, all students will have their status changed to the status you selected. Thus, if everyone is present, you can merely click the P column header to change everyone's status to "Present". If only one person is absent, you could first click P to set everyone's status to "Present", and then set just the absent student's status to "Absent".
  4. Enter remarks as appropriate — for example, the reason for an absence if known, or the number of minutes a student was late.
  5. Then select the 'Save Attendance" button
These steps come from the Moodle Doc: Attendance Activity, but have been altered for use by Davidson-Davie. Visit the original source for more information about things like adding sessions in bulk using a CSV file (great for courses with irregular meeting schedules) or generating attendance reports.