Attendance Tracking in Brightspace

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How to Track Attendance in Brightspace

Why Track Attendance?

It is important that all instructors regularly track student attendance in classes, whether they are teaching in-seat, hybrid, or online. Tracking student attendance is vital for a variety of administrative functions of the university, from releasing financial aid funds and administratively withdrawing students in accordance with university policies, to alerting student support services that a reach-out or intervention for struggling students may be necessary.

Attendance-Tracking Guidelines

In order for various GSU offices and staff to do their parts to provide timely support for faculty and students, please ensure you are regularly tracking student attendance according to the following guidelines:

  • Track attendance weekly for all students in all classes, regardless of modality.
  • Track attendance in Brightspace—we will not be using Attendance Tracker anymore, starting in Summer 2026.
  • For in-seat classes, track attendance by scheduled class session (e.g., twice a week for T/R classes, three times a week for M/W/F classes).
  • For fully online classes, track attendance once a week. You will need to use your discernment as the instructor in deciding whether or not a student “attended” the online class based on factors such as their degree of participation (e.g., presence in discussion forums or collaborative group documents), completion of work due (e.g., submitted assignments or quizzes), and/or communication with the instructor (e.g., responses to emails, showing up for scheduled virtual meetings). For instance, if three assignments were due in a given week and the student only submitted two of them, the instructor would need to use their judgment to decide whether completing some but not all of the assigned work constitutes the student having attended for that week.
  • For WEEK 1 of every semester and session, enter the week’s attendance before Thursday at 11:30 p.m. The attendance report will run at that time, and we want to ensure week 1 participation is accurately captured for financial aid and administrative withdrawal purposes.
  • For all subsequent weeks of a semester or session, in-seat classes should track weekly attendance by EOB each Friday, and online classes should weekly record attendance by Monday morning of the following week (if assignments are due on Sundays).

 

Note: Attendance reports use for various administrative functions will be a day behind versus real-time. Please keep this in mind if you receive notices regarding students or questions from students.

 

How to Track Attendance in Brightspace

Part 1: Set up an Attendance Register

 

  1. Access the Brightspace course site for the class for which you need to report attendance. Click the “Attendance” tab in the main site navigation. 

 

Screen capture of a Brightspace course showing the Attendance option to select from the main site navigation.



This will display the preloaded attendance registers you can choose from. 

 

  1. From the following options, select the attendance register that is the most appropriate for your class:

     

    Close-up screenshot of the five attendance register options for instructors to choose from, which are built into each Brightspace course site: In Person (M/W), In Person (M/W/F), In Person (Meets ONLY once a week), In Person (T/R), and Online (Weekly). Users select a check box to pick a register.



    DO NOT EDIT REGISTERS. Editing the pre-loaded registers in any way will result in the backend data processes failing to pick up the attendance records and carry them over into Banner. 

    Each specific register was created to recognize the beginning and ending date for the semester as a whole, and it auto populates the correct amount of class sessions based on the length of the semester and when the class meets. For online classes, attendance is recorded only on a once-a-week basis, so the register will reflect 16 sessions. The attendance dates which will carry over into Banner will be based on the individual class beginning and ending dates. 

    For first session and second session classes, you will still select the appropriate attendance scheme for the class. For each session classes, instructors will only be utilizing the first 8 weeks of the attendance scheme during the fall and spring semesters or 4 weeks during the summer semester. The remaining days or weeks for the scheme may be left blank. This will not hurt anything. 

     

  2. You can choose to delete the registers that you will not need to use for the class. To do this, select the registers to be hidden and then select More Actions > “Delete”. 

     

    More Actions drop-down menu, and choosing Delete.



    When registers are deleted, the only register which will be visible when logging into the class will be the register you did not choose to delete. This will make it easier for you to know which register you are utilizing for each class, and avoid making human errors as you juggle tracking attendance in multiple classes with possibly different meeting schedules. The example below reflects what you will see when you select the attendance register for a face-to-face class that meets Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with other attendance registers hidden.

     

    Screenshow showing the instructor’s view when all but the one most appropriate attendance register have been hidden from view. In this image, only the In Person (M/W/F) register is visible.

     

  3. If you accidentally delete the wrong register and need to restore it, click on More Actions > “View Deleted Registers.” Then, select the Restore button beside the register you want to make visible again.

     

    Screenshot showing the list of deleted registers, which can be reinstated if needed by using the Restore button beside each register.

 

Part 2: Documenting Attendance

 

  1. When you have the appropriate register selected for the class, click on it to enter the attendance roster and document attendance. The following examples give an idea of what different registers will look like once you enter them to update.

    Example: Online (Weekly) register
     

    Screenshot showing what the Online (Weekly) register looks like to track student attendance; the weekly tracking options are labeled as W1, W2, W3, and so on.



    Example: In Person (M/W/F) register
     

    Screenshot showing what the In Person (M/W/F) register looks like to track student attendance; the session tracking options are labeled by week and day, as W1:M, W1:W, W1:F, W2:M, and so on.



    Example: In Person (Meets ONLY once a week) register
     

    Screenshot showing what the In Person (Meets ONLY once a week) register looks like to track student attendance; the weekly tracking options are labeled as W1, W2, W3, and so on.



     

  2. In the register, click on the Calendar/Pencil icon (in the column header) to access the individual attendance roster for a specific day or week. In the example below, an instructor is going to document attendance for the Friday meeting session for a MWF class, which the tick marks/dashes indicate has not yet been documented.

     

    Screen capture showing the pencil icon to click on if you want to update the attendance roster for a specific session (such as W3:F), because tick marks in the column indicate attendance hasn’t been recorded.



    After selecting the edit attendance icon, you will see the attendance roster for the individual day or week you are wanting to document attendance for, which will look similar to this: 

     

    Screencapture showing a detailed view of the W3:F attendance roster in editing mode. A list of student names have check boxes next to them, which can be selected for commands such as Set Status for All Users and Email All Users. Each student name also has a drop-down menu beside it in the Attendance Status column, where attendance status can be changed by individual student.



     

  3. Mark students’ attendance using the following status options: 

    P = Present
    A = Absent
    EA = Excused Absence
    IA = Institutional Absence

    An Institutional Absence should be used for students who are participating in a university-sanctioned event, such as athletes competing in a game or students attending GSU at the Capitol Day.

    An Excused Absence should be used when the student was absent but received instructor approval for the absence (e.g., due to illness or car accident).

     

    1. You can set the attendance status for ALL students at once by selecting the “Set Status for All Users” button and choosing the appropriate status. For example, all students can be set as Present for the class meeting session all at once. Be sure to select Save. 

       

      Screen capture showing the drop-down menu options when choosing to Set Stats for All Users; options include None, PR, A, EA, and IA. Instructors may Save or Cancel after selecting a status option.



       

    2. For large classes, you can set all student as present (PR) and then individually update the students who were absent to absent (A) status. This can be considerable time-saver depending on class size.

       
    3. If attendance is left blank for any student, a date will not pull over for that student when the process runs in the evening. It will also not impact the student’s attendance percentage.

       

    4. Students attendance status can be changed on an individual basis by selecting the appropriate code from the drop-down menu beside each student name in the roster. Be sure to click Save.  

       

      Screen capture showing how to set attendance status for an individual student, and then either Save or Close the editing window for that attendance roster.



       

    5. When you have completed documenting attendance and clicked Save, you can then select Close to go back to the full attendance register, with all students and their full attendance records.

       

      Screen capture showing the full attendance roster with attendance statuses (e.g., PR, A, IA) populated for each student across multiple class sessions, as well as one class session for which no attendance has been recorded yet (indicated by tick marks).



       

  4. If you have attendance concerns for any students, you can check the box next to their name and select the Email option to send the selected student a targeted email. If you are emailing multiple students in this manner, it will automatically Blind Copy (BCC) the students in the email so they will not see who the email is being sent to. Therefore, if emailing multiple students, make your messaging generic enough that it is not addressed to any one individual by name or any personally identifiable details.
     

    Screen capture showing how to select the checkbox beside the names of students and then select Email to send a message to those students.

 

 

Additional Information

 

  • There is no option to add notes to the attendance records for students. 
  • There is an automatic process that will pull the attendance data from Brightspace and insert the data into Banner. The process will not overwrite any dates already entered. The dates will be one day behind and reflect attendance from the day before. 
  • Marking a student with EA or IA will not count the student as absent. 
  • The date entered for a fully online class will not necessarily be the exact date the student participated. It will just be a date that falls within the week you marked them present or absent. 
  • Instructors may choose to leave attendance blank for specific weeks or days for the following reasons: a class session was canceled, the university was on break, the university was observing a holiday.
  • All attendance registers have an 80% non-attendance threshold built in. 
Screenshot of the five attendance register options for instructors to choose from, including the total number of sessions to be tracked for each register as well as the associated cause-for-concern percentage thresholds.

If a student’s attendance drops below 80% for the class, the instructor will see the total attendance percentage for that student in red in the % Attendance column, as in the example below. 
 

Screenshot of the five attendance register options for instructors to choose from, including the total number of sessions to be tracked for each register as well as the associated cause-for-concern percentage thresholds.



 

As seen in this screenshot, the total number of individual attendance records per each code type will also be reflected for each student.