How do I add class sessions to an existing attendance activity?

The university requires that you complete daily class attendance through the Moodle Attendance activity. The system will pre-populate the Moodle attendance activity shell, but you, as the faculty member, will need to indicate when your course meets. You would do this once at the beginning of the academic term, by adding a repeating class session.

  1. From the main page of your course in Moodle, click on the pre-loaded Attendance activity. This activity should be located near the “Announcements” forum in the top ‘General’ section of your course.
  2. From within the Attendance activity, click on the second tab, titled, “Add session.”
  3. On the “Add session” page, under the “Add session” heading, complete the:
    1. “Date” field (which is the first date the class meets)
    2. “Time” field (which is the time class begins and ends in 24hr time, so 6:30PM to 9:30PM course would be 18:30 to 21:30)
  4. If you want to add all of the class meetings for your term, expand the next section titled, “Multiple sessions.” If you are only adding one session (like a make-up class, for instance), you can skip this session and scroll right down to the “Add” button.
  5. Under Multiple sessions:
    1. Check the box next to “Repeat the session above as follows.”
    2. Next to “Repeat on” check the boxes next to the days of the week you meet.
    3. Complete the “Repeat until” date with the last day of class or of the term.
  6. DO NOT ADJUST THE “Repeat every” setting unless you do not meet every week. For instance, if you meet every other week, you would change this setting to ‘2’ instead of ‘1.’
  7. Click the “Add” button to create your class sessions.
  8. The system will create all of your sessions as indicated and return you back to the main attendance activity page, with a notice of how many sessions it generated
  9. If you have generated sessions where you will not meet (e.g., Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Spring Break, etc.), you can delete sessions one of two ways: individually or in a group.
    1. To delete a single class session, locate the session and click on the trash can icon in the ‘Actions’ column.
      When the confirmation message appears, check to make sure you really want to delete that session. Click ‘Continue’ to delete the session.
    2. To delete a group of sessions, check the boxes to the far right of each session. Scroll down to the bottom of the page. Change the action drop-down to ‘Delete’ and click ‘OK.’
      When the confirmation message appears, check to make sure you really want to delete those sessions. Click ‘Continue’ to delete the sessions.

A few notes:

  • To take attendance, click on the attendance activity and then click on the black arrow/triangle in the “Actions” column for the appropriate class session. Mark students:
    P – Present, L – Late, E – Excused, or A – Absent.
  • To change the name of the activity (to remove the Faculty instructions, for instance), on the main page of your course, turn on the editing. Click the pencil next to the Attendance activity name. Makes your changes and click enter.
  • To make the attendance activity graded, on the main page of your course, turn on the editing. Click on the “Edit” drop-down for the “Attendance” activity, and choose the “Edit settings” option. Under “Grade,” change the type to Points and update the “Maximum grade” value, if you choose.