Qwickly Attendance: Configuring Settings - Ultra

Qwickly Attendance provides instructors with the flexibility to customize the tool according to their specific course requirements. Instructors have the freedom to determine how student attendance records and data are presented, how attendance points are calculated for their courses, and how to notify students of absences, among other options. To configure these settings:

1. In your Ultra course shell, click Books & Tools and scroll down to locate Qwickly Attendance LTI from the Available Tools list.
2. Click Qwickly Attendance LTI to be taken to the tool.
   
3. On the next screen, select Begin Setup.
4. In the tool, click Settings on the left-hand side of the screen. The Settings page is set up in 4 tabs: Preferences, Attendance Statues, Automatic Emails, and Grading.

Preferences

The preferences screen allows you to configure the way you view information about your students and the records you are keeping while taking attendance with the tool.

• User Sorting buttons allow you to configure how you want your students to display when taking attendance
  
• View Preferences checkboxes are for opting into additional information when taking attendance.
  Note: The setting to "Show Unavailable and Disabled Students in Record" also affects how your attendance data is exported at the end of the term. To ensure that records of students who are no longer enrolled in the course are exported, enable this setting before exporting your attendance records.
• Check In is where you can elect to have a unique PIN generated for students to enter every time you take attendance by student Check-In. Students will enter the PIN into the tool from their device to check into class. A check-in timer can also be configured on this screen. 

Attendance Statuses

By default, Qwickly has three statuses you can select from when taking attendance:

• Present  - student earns 100% of the attendance points possible for that day
• Absent - student earns 0% of the attendance points possible for that day
• Excused -  drops the session from the attendance calculations for a student. Learn more about how the Excused status works on the Qwickly knowledge base.

Instructors can also choose to create Custom Course Statuses to meet their needs.

Automatic Emails

This tab allows you to opt into an automated email sent to students when they're marked absent to help them stay on track. Once enabled, you can customize the email messages that students receive.

Grading

The grading tab is where you will add Qwickly Attendance to your Blackboard Grade Center.

1. Session-Based Grading Column is the most straightforward way to add attendance to your Grade Center. Once enabled, you must choose whether to grade attendance based on Total Points or Points Per Session.
   • Total Points - defined by the total number of points that attendance will be worth for the course. (If Total Points is defined as 100, a student with 2 Presents and 2 Absents will have earned 50 points out of a possible 100),
   • Points Per Session - defined by the total number of points earned for each recorded session (If Points Per Session is defined as 5, a student earns 5 points for every time they are marked Present for a session).
2. Absence-Based Grading - will add or subtract attendance points every time a student is marked absent.
   

Additional Resources

• Qwickly Attendance webinars
• Attendance articles in Qwickly’s knowledge base