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Need to track attendance? Tired of shuffling paper attendance sheets around? Canvas offers two applications for tracking attendance: the Roll Call Attendance application and the Qwickly Attendance application.
This article covers:
Qwickly is an external tool for attendance tracking that includes student self-check-in. It enables students to use their mobile devices, the Canvas Student App or the Qwickly App for self-check-in, as well as traditional attendance tracking by the instructor. Qwickly includes easy-to-view attendance reports for both instructors and students. Instructors can choose whether to grade attendance and, if they do, how many points they want to award for it. Setup and usage Instructions are available in our Qwickly Support article.
Roll Call Attendance is an external tool that allows faculty to mark students as Present, Absent, or Late. You can view students alphabetically or use a seating chart. Instructions for setting up and using Roll Call Attendance are available in the Canvas Community.
Qwicky and Roll Call Feature Comparison
| Feature |
Qwickly |
Roll Call |
| Student Self-Check-In |
Yes |
No |
| Optional Gradebook Column |
Yes |
No |
| Ability to set number of points for Gradebook |
Yes |
No |
| Easy on-screen Attendance Report |
Yes |
No |
| View Sections separately or together |
Yes |
No |
| Sort Students alphabetically |
Yes |
Yes |
| Seating Chart |
No |
Yes |
Roll Call Attendance offers a basic attendance report for download. To view detailed absences, late entries, and attendance records, check each student's attendance record in the Roll Call Attendance tool. For a detailed report of all the students, follow these instructions to create an Excel sheet with attendance data.
If you don't want to use the Roll Call Attendance tool in Canvas, you can use Canvas to download a spreadsheet with a list of all your students' names. To download the spreadsheet:
- Go to "Grades" in your course.
- Click "Actions" in the upper left corner of your grade book. Select "Export."
- This will create a file in CSV (comma-delimited) format that you can open in Excel.
- When you open the file in Excel, you will be prompted to pick a delimiter. For this file, select "Comma."
- Names will be listed in column A. You can delete all the other columns and add columns for daily attendance. When you're done setting up your attendance sheet, click the "File" menu and choose "Save As." Save the file in"Excel Workbook" format (.xlsx).
For more information on using Canvas, please visit the Canvas Community for comprehensive resources beyond St. Edward's.