Best Practices for WebAssign to Attendance

It can be difficult to keep track of class attendance in large courses or online. WebAssign can be used to track attendance and empower students to take responsibility.
WebAssign will simplify your attendance process and save you time this semester.
For Attendance, Set up Your Gradebook

To take attendance in WebAssign, the first step is to set up your Gradebook. This allows you to consolidate attendance grades and assign a weighting. These steps are how to follow:
Create an Assignment Category for Attendance. Create a new assignment category in your WebAssign gradebook for attendance. Don’t forget about saving! Once you have created the attendance category, it will automatically appear under My Categories.
Add the Attendance category to your Gradebook. Under the heading “Categories to Include In the GradeBook”, select Yes next the Attendance Category and click Save. Click Next at the bottom of your screen.
Enter the Attendance Category Grade Weighting. Enter the Attendance Category weight (%) to determine how attendance will affect your students’ overall grade. Once you have set up your gradebook, it’s time to select your assignment settings.
Make an Assignment Template for Attendance
The template allows you to easily set the same settings as for all attendance assignments and automatically add them into your gradebook. Be sure to:
To create a new template, click Assignments, then Assignment Template
Assign attendance to the gradebook category
Limit the number of submissions to 1.
You can customize any other settings that you would like for attendance assignments
Save!
Once you have your assignment template, you can decide how to track attendance based upon your course format and attendance requirements.
Find out how students will earn credit for attendance
Are you looking for students to attend your lecture, complete an assignment or watch a prerecorded lecture? Consider the following strategies to track your students’ attendance with WebAssign.
Online Courses or Pre-Recorded Video Lectures

Have you ever tried to join a video conference call and take part in a roll call? It can be difficult to see students calling into class. There is often a lot of background noise, and some attendees don’t turn on their video.
WebAssign will take care of all the stress.
First, create a brand new assignment.
Scroll down to the Question browser, and search for the question ID: 4759359. Save this to your assignment. This will allow you to preview the assignment and save it.

Schedule the assignment within your class time and in the Class Schedule. Make sure to make the assignment password-protected.
Give students the password during lecture or include it in your lecture materials to ensure that only students have access.
Students will mark their presence in the assignment; it will automatically reflect in your gradebook.
This strategy can also be used if you prerecord your lecture and provide the password in the middle to ensure students see the entire thing.
Alternativly, if Zoom or another video conferencing software allows you to pull attendee records, you can manually enter attendance grades into your WebAssign GradeBook following the lecture.
Online Courses: Complete Assignment to Attendance
You can give students an assignment if you decide to skip a lecture. To motivate students to complete the assignment, you might give them more points than usual for attendance.
You can create a new assignment, or you can find one from your Course Packs.
In the assignment editor, choose your Attendance Template.
Edit the points per question in the assignment editor to match the total points you would like to give students to complete this assignment instead of class time.
Schedule the assignment: If you would like the assignment completed during the time you host class, schedule the “available time” as the start and the “due time” as an end of class.
You can give students more freedom to complete the assignment outside the class time.

To count students’ attendance, they must submit the assignment by the end of class (or the time you have decided to allow). It is important that the difficulty level and number of questions are in line with the time required to complete the assignment.
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