Attendance module requests

Please remember, your developer speak english not good. Write more simply! :o)

Suggestions

Export photos in Excel or Open Office

At present in version 1.9.1 at least, the images are not being sent along with the rest of the data.

Separate sessions for Group/Grouping

Need detailed description.

'Not sure if it's ultra specific for others but we would like to be able to define location, group, category, instructor, subject, etc when adding sessions. (I have started to try my hand at programming this but I'm very new to web programming.) We also want to be able to view and edit sessions grouped according to teacher, category etc. (Barry)'

Punch in and punch out

Since we now have the start time of a session (and maybe duration) couldn't we use this to calculate whether a student is present, late, left early etc? Then we could just click "In" or "Out" and the status is calculated automatically. I would prefer that the students have to sign in/out themselves maybe with a password/barcode.

I think it will be nice in teacher view of block (Dmitry)

I think there should be two options:

1. Teachers punch students in and out (using the start time and duration to calculate present, absent, late, left early etc). Some javascript to do the calculations without page refreshes would be nice if possible.
2. Students sign themselves in and out by either:
   1. Scanning a barcode card
   2. Scanning their fingerprints (so they can't sign in/out for their friends)
   3. Typing in a username and password

I'm not sure how a Student Sign in/out view area would work. It should only be activated by a teacher in class - shouldn't be possible for students to login while they're at home for instance. Barry Oosthuizen 12:29, 8 February 2009 (CST)

Increase the number of fields

'How about if we add more fields to the attendance_log table of the database as well? These extra fields could then be used to track other things such as a doctor's letter handed in. We would use it to track the status of "make up notes" we require for students who miss class.'

Reset the module/Multiple module instances

If I remove the module and then add it again, old attendance data remains. It would be great to be able to reset the module so that we can start attendance fresh for a new unit of a course. Even better would be the option of multiple attendance instances, so that we could have one module for each unit in a course!

Possibility of reset already implemented in developer's version. Deleting data not always good, so we have simple way for hide unused data - just change course's start date to actual for current course.

Actually this does not work for units within a course. We need to have a course of for example three units, and to reset the attendance data for each unit. We can't change the start date for the entire course after only the first unit is over.

Integrate with ILP Module's Targets and Concerns

The ILP module allows you to set individual targets for students with due dates. A target can have 3 statuses: 1. To be achieved, 2. Achieved or 3. Withdrawn and a due date can be entered against a target. It would be quite handy to use this system for attendance e.g. if a student is marked Absent an ILP Target entry is automatically created telling the student to hand in a doctor's letter within 1 week, come and see the teacher, write up the notes for the class from an audio recording (like we do) or something like that.

Another idea for integrating with ILP module: When a student has not achieved their target (i.e. failed to hand in a doctor's letter etc) by the due date the unachieved target entry becomes a 'Concern' in the ILP module.

Students and teachers will then be able to see at a glance in the ILP module what is outstanding etc.

Adding this kind of feature to the Attendance module without integrating with the ILP is another option I guess.

More info about ILP here: [1]

Integrate with MRBS module

The Meeting Room Booking System module (https://docs.moodle.org/en/MRBS_block) has a database of place (room), time (session, slot), and possibly 2 other info like: course id, teacher (in name and description field of the booking) if desired so.

I wonder if attendance module could have an option of pulling out the data in MRBS and automatically setup the sessions, so that we can avoid setting session manually (and eliminate risk of inconsistency between attendance data and room booking/timetable data).

In a more general term, could the module automatically pull out data from general database that store timetable info?

Import and Export Sessions

Import

It would be very useful to be able to import scheduled events from the Moodle Calendar, Google Calendar, Outlook, MRBS etc straight into the attendance_sessions table and not have to manually recreate them.

Export

For those using the attendance module as the primary place of scheduling events/sessions the ability to export that into Outlook, Google Calendar etc would be great. --Barry Oosthuizen 06:15, 10 February 2009 (CST)

Now in development

Multiply sessions in day

Are we need a duration for sessions? (Dmitry)

'We can do with sessions having a duration. We need to calculate the number of hours a student was in class per week as International Students have to fulfill the minimum requirement of 15 hours per week.'

Increase the number of categories

It would make Attendance more flexible if you could increase the number of categories from the default of 4 to a maximum of 9. This would allow Attendance to be used for daily points, for example. The categories could be set up once under "Settings" as a drop-down menu "Number of categories 4-9" when you are also setting up letters and descriptions, but before sessions. You could leave the default at 4 to keep Attendance easy to use.

This feature will be in near future. You be able to use unlimited number of statuses (categories). (Dmitry)

Export days not yet used in Excel or Open Office

It would be good if you were able to export the days for the future that had not yet been filled in.

I am thinking of a situation where someone might be having a problem with Moodle and has to go back to taking the details manually. In this case, the extra days would be handy. A copy of this could be kept aside for the staff member should the need ever arise.

See also

• Attendance module official page