Faculty Directions, Spring 2005 - Attendance Checking Made Easy

There are no two ways about it: class attendance checking is difficult. Many factors conspire to work against the instructor interested in taking attendance regularly and efficiently. If the instructor takes roll at the start of the period, some students will arrive late and the roll has to be adjusted at the end of the period. If roll is taken after the period ends, students who have to rush to their next class become anxious. Asking the students to sign an attendance sheet during the period can be distracting to some students and may disrupt the lecture. Moreover, the sign-up sheet must be tallied by the instructor after every class period. And there is always the lingering suspicion that students may be signing-in their buddies. These challenges may be manageable in small classes but often prove insurmountable in large ones.

For these reasons, we are developing a Web-based tool called AttendanceChecker. The primary purpose of the tool is to help an instructor take class attendance easily and regularly. AttendanceChecker can be used in any class held in a Classroom Technology classroom but has features designed especially for laptop-enhanced classes. Some of the features are the following:

• Simple entry of student names and identification numbers
• Three ways of taking attendance (checkbox, cardswipe, laptop submission)
• Easy and convenient report generation
• Individual student access of attendance records
• One-click broadcast of an email message to absent students
• Picture gallery of all students in the class

These are explained in greater detail below.

Getting Started

AttendanceChecker first presents to an instructor a login screen (Figure 1) which asks for his or her computer userid and password. Upon successful login, the instructor is shown the main menu (Figure 2) which provides function buttons to: create a new class (Course menu), select a class (Course select), and use the class roll email to enter all students' names (File input) or individual student names (Student menu). Creating a course and entering names are done only once at the beginning of the semester. Figure 3 shows the screen which allows class roll data entry by cutting and pasting the initial class roll email message received by all instructors from the registrar at the beginning of the semester. The drop/add email updates from the registrar, received during the volatile first few weeks of the semester, may also be used to update the rolls.

Taking Attendance

Once a course has been created, the instructor may select a date and collect attendance for that date in one of three ways. (1) Using the cardswipe screen (Figure 4), students can swipe their Clemson University student ID cards through a card magnetic strip reader connected to the instructor's computer. This is very convenient in large classes because attendance can be taken quickly at the end of the class period, typically under five minutes for a class of 70+ students or less. (2) Alternatively, the instructor can check off names on the checklist screen (Figure 5). This is convenient in a small class in which the instructor can visually scan the class and click the names of students present, or "click all" and unclick the names of those who are absent. (3) In a laptop class, large or small, the instructor can set up a question (e.g., "What color shirt is Johnny in the first row wearing?") and provide a choice of answers (Figure 6). Only students in class will be able to answer correctly, and be marked present, within the brief time allowed.

After roll is taken, the instructor can broadcast a preset email message to all absent students (Figure 7). The instructor may also add a personal message. For the record, a copy of the message(s) with the list of names of students absent that day is sent to the instructor's email address. It may be useful to require the students who receive the "Why weren't you in class?" message to respond and give a reason for their absence.

Picture Gallery

A convenient feature of AttendanceChecker is the optional picture gallery. If at the beginning of the semester the instructor takes a digital picture of each of the students in the class, the pictures can be incorporated into AttendanceChecker and can be displayed in a class picture gallery (Figure 8) or individually (Figure 9). Moreover, if attendance is taken using a card magnetic strip reader, the student's picture is displayed by the software as each student swipes his or her card. This is particularly usefully in a large class as it affords the additional benefit of helping an instructor learn the names and faces of the students rather quickly.

Report

The reward for the instructor's diligence in taking daily attendance is the reporting that AttendanceChecker provides: a daily class report, an individual report to date and an overall class report to date. Soon to be available are basic statistical measures summarizing the class cumulative absence data.

Student Access

A student may login to AttendanceChecker and access and verify his or her attendance information. A student must login, of course, to answer an attendance question developed by an instructor in order to be counted present that day.

Availability

AttendanceChecker is available to all Clemson University instructors this Spring 2005 semester. If you would like to use the software, go to:

http://sphinx.cs.clemson.edu:8080/watcher/

For more information, send email to Roy Pargas, pargas@clemson.edu