Attendance Options in Blackboard

In Blackboard

If you are fortunate to have Starfish embedded in your courses (such as all courses at SUNY Schenectady), then you already have a great student retention tool that allows you to electronically record attendance.  Many academics are not so lucky, and this post is for you.

If you like working in Blackboard exclusively, you can opt to use the Full Grade Center to record attendance.  You can do this by either:

1. Creating an attendance column

1. Label it attendance
2. Set the points to 0 and the grading to text (a text string)
3. Hit save
4. Record all the attendance in one cell using a string of text such as a8/17- for absent August 17^th.

2. Create a column for each day of attendance and a total column

1. Record each day with present = 0 and absent = 1
2. Create a total column that calculates the total number of days absent

Blackboard learn offers many features but as of 2016 does not offer a native attendance function for traditional face-to-face courses.  Until Blackboard offers this option we will simply have to make due with alternatives.

Luckily we have plenty of options. Included in the above playlist are the two options above plus another the embeds a google sheet for the faculty to use.