Attendance module
The Attendance module is designed for teachers to be able take attendance during class, and for students to be able to view their own attendance record. A teacher can mark the attendance status of a student as Present, Absent, Late, or Excused. These descriptions are configurable.
General
See the Attendance module forum for discussion and support on this module.
Currently (July 2012), there is a version 2.4.0 of this module available for Moodle v2.0, which is apparently still in beta. It can be downloaded as a zip file at https://github.com/andreev-artem/moodle_mod_attforblock/zipball/MDL_20 or downloaded via Git at https://github.com/andreev-artem/moodle_mod_attforblock/tree/MDL_20, as reported in this post.
The README file of the module warns that it is compatible only with Moodle v2.0, but the present editor has installed it for Moodle v2.3, and preliminary testing indicates that it works.
Note: there is no Attendance module listed in the new Moodle Plugins page. (There is a plugin called Attendance Register, but that's different.) If and when someone publishes the new Attendance module there, please also update this page.
Installation
First, read article Installing contributed modules or plugins, if you haven't done so already.
The installation can only be performed by a user who has (a) write access to the file structure on the computer hosting Moodle, and (b) administration rights for the Moodle installation.
- Log into the computer that hosts your Moodle installation.
- Download the zip file from https://github.com/andreev-artem/moodle_mod_attforblock/zipball/MDL_20, and unpack it into an empty directory.
- Create the folder
<path of your Moodle installation directory>/mod/attforblock. (If you've installed Moodle in the standard location on a Linux system, that would be/var/www/html/moodle/mod/attforblock.) - Copy the extracted files into the newly created folder. (On a Linux system, you'd use the command
sudo cp -r ~/andreev-artem-moodle_mod_attforblock-2e9d05a/* /var/www/html/moodle/mod/attforblock/, assuming you'd extracted the ZIP files under your home directory and had installed Moodle in the standard location.) - On Linux systems, make sure to change the owner and group of the copied files:
- Check the owner and group of the other files by commanding
ls -l /var/www/html/moodle. - Command
sudo chown -R <user>:<group> /var/www/html/moodle/mod/attforblock, where<user>and<group>are the same as for the other files of the Moodle installation.
- Check the owner and group of the other files by commanding
- In your browser, open the Moodle page, and log in as the administrator. You will be asked to complete the installation of the module. Click the "Update" button at the bottom. This will cause the Attendance database structure to be set up.
Language files
The language files for localizing the module are .../attforblock/lang/<language code>/attforblock.php. In order to customize the strings, you can edit the language file(s) of the language(s) you're interested in. You can do it through Moodle itself when logged in as an administrator, via Site administration > Language > Language customization.
Note that the date format is controlled by the language file you install. In the English language file (.../attforblock/lang/en/attforblock.php), the day.month.year format is used. If you prefer some other format, edit the following strings in the language file. (The US month.day.year format is used in this example.)
$string['strftimedm'] = '%%m.%%d'; $string['strftimedmy'] = '%%m.%%d.%%Y'; $string['strftimedmyw'] = '%%m.%%d.%%y (%%a)'; $string['strftimeshortdate'] = '%%m.%%d.%%Y';
Another option for getting US dates is to use the en_us language file instead of en. The former defines the date-related strings as given above, but defers to the en language file for all other strings.
Using module in a class by a teacher
Adding an Attendance activity
After the attendance block and module have been properly installed, the teacher must add Attendance as an activity to each course they wish to keep attendance for. To do this:
- Ensure that you are in the edit mode.
- Display the main page of a course.
- Click on the "Add an activity or resource" link.
- Select the "Attendance" radio button in the dialog that now pops up, and then press "Add".
- Configure the Attendance activity. TO DO: add details here
After this, the attendance module can be used.
TO DO: update the instructions from this point down to reflect the new version of Attendance
However, the section link that was just added in the preceding paragraph is the "clunky way" to work with the attendance module. Of course, we DO want students to be able to view their attendance records, just not with that link. There is a second, better, way to accomplish this using the Attendance block. Select "Attendance" from the pull-down menu in the "Blocks" block. This will create a block with teacher options to take attendance, report on attendance, or change the attendance settings. The same block will instead have an attendance report for students.
Setting Attendance categories and grading options
Now it is time to set your attendance options. Select "Settings" from the attendance block. This brings you to the letters, descriptions, and grade (points) to assign for the four attendance options. By default these are Present, Absent, Late, and Excused. You may prefer to change the descriptions (e.g., change the word Late to Tardy), change the order, or change the way points are counted so make appropriate changes here to the names, order, and grades. Be sure to click the "Update" button when you are done.
Adding sessions
Next it is time to add sessions. Note that there is a restriction here. You can only have one session per day. Since you can only have one attendance activity installed (which means that you cannot have a lab attendance activity and a lecture attendance activity) and can only have one attendance session per day, if you have more than one class session per day you will have to be creative in taking attendance. And if you have more than seven class sessions for a single class in a week--then you are overworked!
To add class sections, click the "Add" tab (second from left) at the top of the page (if you left the attendance page, select any of the three links from the attendance block to return to the attendance page and gain access to the "Add" tab). You have two options here, to add a single session or to add multiple sessions. The single session is self-explanatory as well as time consuming to use when you have many class sessions so I will go straight the more useful option, how to add multiple sessions.
Under the "Create multiple sessions" label choose the date for the first session you wish to add followed by the date for the last session you wish to add. Next select the days of the week on which the class meets. The final option, frequency, may look confusing but it is actually straight-forward. If your class meets every week (the normal situation) then you want a frequency of 1 week which is the default. If your class meets every other week, then you want a frequency of 2 weeks, and so on. When you click the "Add multiple sessions" button, your sessions will be created and you will see a message indicating this.
Taking attendance
Now head to the attendance tab. Here you see the list of all attendance sessions you have added. You can delete an individual session by clicking the X to the right of it. (Personal note, it sure would be nice if there was an option to select a few sessions and delete them all at once--I use the multiple sessions option to put my sessions in for the entire semester and then have to go and remove sessions for vacation days one at a time.) You can edit a session (change the date or add a description) with the standard hand icon to the right of the session, or you can take attendance for a session by clicking the green radio button to the right of the session. Sessions where attendance has already been taken do not have the green button, but instead the description is a link that takes you to the screen to modify the attendance record for that session.
You will note that when taking attendance the column headings for attendance state are links. If you click one of these column headings, all students will have their status changed to the status you selected. Thus, if everyone is absent (God forbid!), you merely click the A and it will change everyone's status to absent. If Little Johnny is the only student absent, you would logically click P to set everyone to present and then go down to Little Johnny and change his status to A. Enter remarks as appropriate (e.g., the reason for an absence if known or the minutes late if someone is tardy) and click OK to complete taking record.
Reports
Finally, you have the reports. This is, again, obvious. One of my colleagues prefers to take record on paper and transfer it to Moodle. She suggested printing the monthly report before the start of the month and then taking record on this report. It has an added advantage because you have each student's picture with the record sheet. Of course, that is only useful for students who actually put photos of themselves in for their picture.
A final note here. If you added the attendance block as recommended, you may wonder what it looks like for students. It is completely different -- showing a summary of their attendance record and having a single link for them to view the details of their personal attendance. Another reason why I think the attendance block should always be added when you use the attendance module.
The README file of the beta version
********************************************************************************************* ****** WARNING: THIS MODULE IS IN DEVELOPMENT. USE WITH CAUTION ****** *********************************************************************************************
-------- ABOUT -------- This is version 2.4.x of the "Attendance" module (attforblock). It is still IN DEVELOPMENT and should not be considered a stable release unless otherwise noted.
2.4.x release is compatible only with Moodle 2.0.
The "Attendance" module is developed by
Dmitry Pupinin, Novosibirsk, Russia,
Artem Andreev, Taganrog, Russia.
This block may be distributed under the terms of the General Public License (see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt for details)
----------- PURPOSE ----------- The attendance module and block are designed to allow instructors of a course keep an attendance log of the students in their courses. The instructor will setup the frequency of his classes (# of days per week & length of course) and the attendance is ready for use. To take attendance, the instructor clicks on the "Update Attendance" button and is presented with a list of all the students in that course, along with 4 options: Present, Absent, Late & Excused, with a Remarks textbox. Instructors can download the attendance for their course in Excel format or text format. Only the instructor can update the attendance data. However, a student gets to see his attendance record.
---------------- INSTALLATION ---------------- The attendance follows standard installation procedures. Place the "attforblock" directory in your mod directory. Then visit the Admin page in Moodle to activate it.
