How do I determine the date of last attendance/participation?

Dear Aggie,

I know we are supposed to report the date of last attendance/participation of students who earn a failing grade (e.g. an F). Is there an easy (efficient) way to do this that doesn’t involve scrolling through the gradebook to see when they last turned in work? I was also wondering about how “attendance” is determined for an online asynchronous course.

~Looking for Dates

 

Dear Looking for Dates,

This is an important question. Thank you for asking!

In your online courses, you can use a built-in Canvas tool to easily get a date of last participation (e.g. for students who will earn an “F”).

To answer the last part of your question, we do want to report on meaningful participation in the course. There are federal guidelines for participation in online courses, and the Canvas participation tool is based on these guidelines.

Specifically, the Canvas last participation tool captures the following student activities:

• Submitting an assignment
• Posting a new comment to a discussion
• Submitting a quiz
• Starting to take a quiz
• Note: There are a few other activities that will trigger participation, but the ones above are the most common. If you are curious, you can see the entire list here.

To get the date of last participation:

• Click on the New Analytics Link (top right menu on your homepage).
• Then click on the Students tab to generate a list of students with a variety of information, including the date of last participation.
• You can search for particular students, and/or click on Grade column to sort from lowest to highest, so that your “F” students will be at the top. (Click on the word “Grade” at the top of the column.)

In your in-person courses, if you use Canvas for quizzes, exams or assignments, you may be able to use the Canvas Last Participation tool.

If you use clickers or another polling device, you can use your clicker gradebook to determine the last time the student participated with their clicker. Or, if your class is small enough, you may be able to rely on attendance. (In my small classes, students complete a daily participation rubric, to self-score their attendance and level of participation).

As one last thought, one of the federal considerations for “academic attendance” (participation) is “initiating contact with a faculty member to ask a question about the academic subject studied in the course.” This is not captured in the Canvas last participation tool. However, in general, students who are reaching out to ask questions about the content are likely still completing work in the course. But do note that this is different than, for example, students reaching out to ask about their grade or their chances of passing.

I hope this helps make your life a little easier when assigning final grades and finding dates of last attendance/participation.

 

~Aggie

 

Here is a link to the Canvas Instructor Guide for Participation:

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-view-analytics-for-an-individual-student-in-New/ta-p/801