How do I edit an existing attendance activity?

This FAQ will walk you through changing the name of the existing attendance activity and updating the settings for the existing attendance activity so that the system grades it for you.

Changing the Default Attendance Activity Name

  1. From the main page of your course, click on the gray ‘Edit’ gear wheel in the upper right corner.
  2. From the drop-down menu that appears, click the ‘Turn editing on’ option.
  3. Once the editing is on, locate the existing ‘Attendance’ activity.
  4. Click on the gray pencil to the right of the name of the ‘Attendance’ activity.
  5. Remove any extra text that you do not want in the activity name.
  6. When done, click enter to accept the changes or escape to keep the previous content.

Making the Attendance Activity Graded

To change the attendance activity settings such that it calculates a grade, you can follow the steps below. Moodle grades the attendance by allotting each attendance session two points. Each student can then earn the following:

  • Present – 2 points out of 2 points possible
  • Late – 1 point out of 2
  • Excused – 1 out of 2
  • Absent – 0 out of 2

For example:

If you have 16 attendance sessions, and student A has an attendance record of 13 P, 1 L, and 2 A, they would have earned 27 out of 32 points which is an 84.375 (27/32).

If you had told Moodle that the attendance activity was worth 100 points, that 84.375 is the grade that Moodle would put in the gradebook for the Attendance activity. If the activity was set-up to be out of a different number of points, say 20, the system would display a grade of 84.375% of 20 points which is 16.875 in the gradebook.

How to change the attendance activity to automatically grade

  1. From the main page of your course, click on the gray ‘Edit’ gear wheel in the upper right corner.
  2. From the drop-down menu that appears, click the ‘Turn editing on’ option.
  3. Once the editing is on, locate the existing ‘Attendance’ activity.
  4. Click the ‘Edit’ drop-down menu to the right of the activity.
  5. From the options that appears, select the ‘Edit settings’ option.
  6. On the attendance activity settings page, expand the ‘Grades’ option.
  7. Change the ‘Type’ from ‘None’ to ‘Point.’
  8. Enter the grade for ‘Maximum grade.’
  9. Then scroll down and click the ‘Save and return to course’ button.