How do I make the existing attendance activity graded?

This FAQ will walk you through updating the settings for the existing attendance activity so that the system grades it for you. By default, the attendance activity is not set to be 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.

Making An Existing Attendance Activity Graded

  1. From the main page of your course, click on the ‘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.
  10. Now the next time you enter attendance for a class session, the system will generate the grade from all of the existing data. The system-generated attendance grades will not appear in the gradebook until you have entered attendance for a class session AFTER you have updated the settings.

Forcing the Existing Attendance to Appear in the Gradebook

As mentioned above, once you have adjusted the settings for an attendance activity to be graded, the next time you enter attendance for a class session, the system will generate the grade from all of the existing data. The system-generated attendance grades will not appear in the gradebook until you have entered attendance for a class session AFTER you have updated the settings.

What does this mean? This means that immediately after you have changed the attendance settings to have the activity grading, you will have a blank column for your ‘Attendance’ activity in the gradebook. The data will not calculate until you next take Attendance. Then the system will look at all of the previous class sessions you’ve created in which you have taken attendance, and will generate the Attendance grade accordingly.

Please note: If you are changing the ‘Attendance’ activity’s settings at the end of the term when you have no more class sessions to track, or if you need the data to be generated in the gradebook right away, you will have to create and take attendance for a fake class session. Then delete the fake class session. Now when you look in the gradebook, the Attendance column will be populated with the appropriate data. 

To do this, follow these steps, continued from above.

  1. From the main page of your course, click on the Attendance activity, as if you were going to take attendance.
  2. Click on the ‘Add session’ tab.
  3. Leave everything as is. Scroll down and click the ‘Add’ button.
  4. Back on the sessions page, scroll down until you see your new session. Click the black triangle to take attendance for your fake session.
  5. Click the circle at the top of any of the columns to populate data for everyone.
  6. Scroll down and click the ‘Save attendance’ button.
  7. Back on the class sessions page, scroll back down again to the new fake session. Click the black trash bin to delete the fake session. Confirm your deletion.
  8. Now when you head back in to the gradebook, all of the previous attendance sessions will have been calculated into a grade that will now be showing in your ‘Attendance’ activity column.