If we compare attendance of students these days to that of students 15-20 years back, we can see a significant number of students not attending schools or colleges regularly. The reason was the policies made by the educational institutes. The educational institutes these days are pretty sure that if they want to get the best academic scores out of students they need students to attend regularly. Hence, the rules got stricter.
Educational Institutes face a big problem when they have to make sure that students attend online classes. Students may join the class but will not be attentive so teachers face problems in making the students understand the topic as well. Below we have discussed 5 ways in which a teacher can take attendance in Online Classes:
Marking attendance manually
Marking attendance by calling the name or roll number of students is how attendance is marked in offline classes as well. This is the most basic way to mark the attendance in online classes and has various setbacks which are listed below:
- Because you’re marking everything by hand, this takes a long time.
- There’s also the possibility that students will leave the session as soon as their presence is recognised.
- You’ve probably heard of the term ‘proxy attendance.’
- A proxy is a student who regularly marks attendance for his pals.
- In certain situations, the real and registered attendance do not match, causing misunderstanding.
These are the few drawbacks of manually marking attendance but some teachers prefer this method because it is really easy and that is how the teachers have been marking the attendance for years so they are hesitant to change. However, the drawbacks weigh much heavier than the pros so this method must be followed only if there is no other way.
Using Google Forms
This is a better way to mark attendance than manually marking attendance. A form is sent as a mail to every student where they can fill in some details and submit the form. This is a decent way to eliminate any proxy attendance marked by students as the mail is sent to the mail id of every student and they may not share the credentials of their personal email id with their friends. There are students who do share the email id credentials with their friends and using google forms becomes a liability because of such students.
Video Check
Checking the video of each and every candidate during the class is a very long process if there are a lot of students in the online class and this is the only drawback of this method. However, if you set this drawback aside this is the most efficient way to mark attendance because:
- No one can mark proxy attendance this way.
- No one can leave the class as their video is on.
- Teacher will get the exact number of students as many are there in real-time.
This method may have a lot of pros but when it comes to the practical implementation, this method is a headache for teachers as they will have to count each and every student and this method can not be implemented if there are many students in the class.
Using Mid-Class Polls
Taking polls amidst the class is a very good way of checking who is attending the class and who is not. Some even sit in front of the screen and are not attentive so they do not reply so by using these polls teachers can filter such students out and call them by their name and make them attend the classes. This is probably the best way to check attendance in online classes. The benefits of using Mid-Class Polls are stated below:
- Teachers can mark the attendance with ease by simply doing a single poll.
- Teachers can keep track of students who are actually attending the class and also mark out students who are not being attentive and call them individually.
- This makes the students actually take classes seriously because they know the teacher will know if they won’t.
After Lecture Discussion
Discussing what everyone understood from the class is a good way of knowing how many of the students were active in the class or are even there. Teachers can give a small five minute task to everyone to write about some topic and whoever does not write can be marked absent. This is simply the best way to mark attendance because:
- There is no possible way to write from two accounts simultaneously unless students have shared their account and even so it will be a bit hectic and make students hesitant in doing so.
- Along with the attendance teachers can also know how much the topic is understood by students.
So these are the 5 ways of marking attendance in online classes. Teachers can also use various online tools to track and mark the attendance of students. Online tools are of many types and have various features some of them are paid and some of them are for free. Gibbon one such plug and play solution through which not o
Teachers can also use the platform they are taking classes on to take the attendance of students. These platforms themselves provide a functionality of marking the attendance. On some platforms the attendance is marked on the basis of how long a student has attended the class. For example, a student will only be marked present if he/she has been attending the class for more than 80% of the class duration. Some platforms mark the attendance at the end of the class while some mark at the beginning. All platforms give teachers the right to change the attendance as per their record as well in a separate panel. So using these platforms is also beneficial for the teachers as it provides a good backup attendance marking solution.
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Frequently Asked Question
Question: What’s the importance of attendance in the online class?
Answer: Regular attendance fosters a classroom community between teachers and children. And in Online classes it’s even more important to keep the track of students as everything happen virtually.
Question: How to track the students in Online Class?
Answer: Below we have discussed 5 ways in which a teacher can take attendance in Online Classes:
- Marking attendance manually
- Using Google Forms
- Video Check
- Using Mid-Class Polls
- After Lecture Discussion
Question: How can I increase the number of attendance in my class?
Answer: Teachers and administrators are much more likely to influence students to improve their attendance, they can follow various ways to increase the attendance percent in their online class by developing positive, meaningful relationships with students and creating conditions for them to be successful.
Question: How can a teacher motivate learner attendance?
Answer: Lecture has its place in a class, but students respond best when you mix it up a bit, using discussion, group work, hands-on activities, so teachers can motive students by adding new teaching techniques as and when required.
