Setting Up Qwickly Attendance in Canvas

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Setting up Qwickly in Your Canvas Course

  1. Launch Qwickly Attendance
    • Log into Canvas and navigate into the course you’d like to set up attendance for.
    • Click on “Qwickly Attendance” in the Course Navigation menu.
    • Don't see Qwickly? In Canvas, you can customize the order of your menu items by clicking “Settings - Navigation" (How do I manage Course Navigation links?)
    • The very first time you attempt to launch Qwickly, you may be asked to Authorize the app. Click "Authorize". 
  2. In Qwickly, click the blue "Begin Setup" button (you only need to do this once for each course)
  3. Click on "Settings" in the blue left navigation menu. You will see 4 tabs: Preferences, Attendance Statuses, Automatic Emails and Grading. Most settings can be left as-is, but see "Settings Overview" below for more details. The only setting you must adjust, if you intend to consider attendance for grading, are in the Grading Tab.
  4. To enable Grading sync between Qwickly and Canvas
    • Click on the Grading Tab on the far right
    • Check either "Session Based Grading Column" (Recommended) or "Absence Based Grading Column". More details in Which Grading Method?, below. If you don't check either box, grades will not be passed back to Canvas.
    • Once you have done this, and clicked Save Settings (Step 5 below), a column will appear in your Canvas Gradebook. It will be labelled with whatever you chose for the column name (default name is "Attendance").
  5. Click "Save Settings"

Note: you must do steps 1, 2 and 5 to begin using Qwicky (launch from Canvas, click "Begin Setup," then click "Save Settings") even if you don't intend to use grading or adjust any of the settings. If you don't enable grade sync, you can still use Qwickly to track attendance.

Taking Attendance

Once you’ve saved your settings you can start taking attendance.

  • Click "Qwickly Attendance" in your Canvas Course Navigation menu to open Qwickly

  • In Qwickly, under "Attendance" in the blue left-side navigation menu, you will see all the methods for taking attendance that are available to you. The most commonly used one is List: in this mode you will see a list of your students and will simply manually mark them absent or present. When you are done taking attendance, make sure to click "Submit" at the bottom of the page.

  • In Canvas, once you have a established a grade sync (step 4 above), a column labelled "Attendance" will automatically appear in your Canvas Gradebook. Once you begin entering attendance in Qwickly, the points should automatically population in this Canvas column.

Which Grading Method?

Method 1: Session Based Grading Column > Points per Session (MOST POPULAR)

  • How it works: if each session is worth 1 point, after the first class, a student will see a grade of 1/1. After the second class, if they were present, they will see a grade of 2/2. If they missed the second class, they will have a grade of 1/2. And so on.
  • Points per Session: usually set at 1 to 5 points per session, but it could be anything
  • Consider Before Choosing this Method: simple to set up and understand. No need to decide total points ahead of time. 

Method 2: Session Based Grading Column > Total points

  • How it works: You define a total number of points that attendance will be worth (example: 100). After the first class, a student will see a grade of
  • Points per Session: undefined, they will be automatically calculated.
  • Consider Before Choosing this Method: You might use this method is you do NOT intend to use weighted grading in Canvas (if you are using a total points grading system, and you know exactly how many points each course component will be worth). However you could also use Method 1 above and simply calculate the number of classes and determine how many points each session needs to be. Example: if there are 30 class meetings and you want the total to add up to 100 points, you could use Method 1 and set points per session = 3.33. 

Method 3: Absence Based Grading Column

  • How it works: You define a total number of points that attendance will be worth (example: 100), and the amount of points each session will be worth (example: 2). All students will start with the 100 points, and after once absence, their attendance grade will drop to 98. After 2 absences, it will drop to 96, and so on.
  • Points per Session: 1 to 5 points per session seems reasonable but in Qwickly, you MUST input a negative number or else points will be added, not subtracted!
  • Consider Before Choosing this Method: Some might see this method as punitive, since it subtracts points rather than adding them. An additional issue is that students will start off with a large number of points,* which some instructors might see as a motivator, while others might see as a misleading sense of security. Finally, some instructors may view the removal of points (of even the threat of removal of points) as an effective deterrent. 

*the number of points assigned to attendance (total or per session) is essentially irrelevant if you are using Weighted Grading in Canvas. If you set attendance to be worth 10% of the students' total grade, then it does not matter how many total possible points are in that category.

Settings Overview

Preferences

All of these settings are optional. They can be left as-is in most cases.

Attendance Statuses

  • System Statuses: These are the default attendance statuses: Present, Absent, and Excused. It is possible to turn these off if you don't want to use these statuses. The main reason you might want to do this is if you would prefer to use only custom statuses (below). You can only turn them off, you can't change the language or color of the system statuses.

  • Custom Course Statuses: You can create your own custom statuses for this course, which you can use instead of system statuses or in addition to system status. For example, you might want to add an additional status called "Late" which will entitle the student to only half credit for the days attendances

Automatics Emails

Choose whether or not to send an email to students when they have been marked as absent. By default, automatic emails are OFF.

Attendance Record

Also in the left-side menu, you’ll see an item called “Attendance Record.” This page gives you a detailed overview of all your course’s attendance records. You can look up a specific student, view/edit specific session details, edit a student’s status, leave them a comment, and more. You can also export the data in a custom report.

Additional Resources

For more information including screenshots, view the Qwickly User guide here. When reviewing support materials provided by Qwickly, please be aware that FSU only licenses Qwickly Attendance Classic, NOT Attendance Plus or Attendance Pro. Nor does FSU license any additional Qwickly products.

View this 3-minute video demonstration of Qwickly setup in Canvas.

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