Every Canvas course site has an Attendance menu item on the left. The first time you access it, you will be asked to allow a plug-in program called Roll Call, which is the software that Canvas uses. However, there are several limitations to be aware of:
- By default, as soon as you take Attendance the first time, Canvas will populate a new column in your Gradebook and make it worth 100 points automatically, as well as add to either an existing Assignment group or its own.
- If you do not want attendance to be worth 100 points, while Canvas documentation indicates that you must change it immediately after taking attendance the first time, in fact we have found that ANY change from the default value of 100 points will cause discrepancies in the total score. It is therefore best to place the 100-point Attendance grade within a weighted Assignment group that you already have or in its own group, where you can make it a specific percentage of your final grade. This is discussed in their documentation called How do I edit the Roll Call Attendance assignment?
Other various features of taking attendance and using it are covered here: How do I take roll call using the Attendance tool? If you do not want attendance to count as a grade, but still keep track of it, you can try making the assignment worth zero points. Again however, as indicated above, this must be done right away as soon as you take attendance the first time and even then may still affect the total score. If changing the point value does not work, you can place it in its own weighted assignment group and make the group worth 0% of the grade.
Like any assignment, students will receive notifications each time you take attendance. You can, therefore, MUTE the assignment of Roll Call Attendance so that students do not constantly get notifications. Muting an assignment is covered in this document: How do I mute or unmute an assignment in the Gradebook?
Students can see the specific dates that they have missed a class as well as their ongoing, overall Attendance score. This is true EVEN IF ATTENDANCE HAS BEEN MUTED.
In order for you, as the instructor, to obtain a listing of which dates(s) your students have missed class, however, you must run a Roll Call Attendance report following these instructions: How do I run Roll Call Attendance reports in a course? Please note that it will be emailed to you as a CSV file, which can be opened up in Excel. If you do not know Excel, there has been an article posted in the Canvas Community with step-by-step instructions here.
The Canvas developers are well aware of the limitations of the Attendance tool, as many Canvas users in the community have voiced their concerns about it. Unfortunately, a new tool will likely not see deployment soon.