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Attendance on campus and online

Contents

Attendance On Campus

Teaching Staff involvement in Attendance data collection

Where it is School policy to capture attendance, registers will need to be taken by teaching staff for their face-to-face sessions on campus.

Teaching staff will need to consider the best method of collecting and recording data, based on the guidelines / suggestions below:

Students should ideally be asked to verbally confirm their presence in a face-to-face session, rather than signing a paper register – their response could then be recorded by the teaching member of staff, either directly into RISIS, on a spreadsheet or on a paper register:

  • Teaching staff could record attendance initially on a paper register (downloaded from RISIS) and then transfer information to an electronic version either RISIS or spreadsheets, depending on the method used in the Department or School. Where possible this should ideally be completed by the same person, rather than passing the hard copy onto another member of staff.
  • Teaching staff can capture data directly into RISIS attendance screens, particularly for a small session. This is straightforward to do and changes were made at the start of the spring term 2020/21 to make this process quicker, more efficient and less prone to errors. See RISIS Module Attendance Data Entry Improvements.
  • Alternatively, teaching staff could record attendance directly into a spreadsheet.
  • For Henley Business School, teaching staff should liaise with their Programme Administration team regarding attendance data capture.

Where they are available, portable card readers can be used to capture attendance data in spreadsheets, especially for larger group teaching sessions such as labs or workshops. Any School or Department using portable card readers must ensure they have procedures in place for the cleaning of equipment between uses and should make sure students follow current social distancing guidelines when queueing to 'tap in'.

Some Schools are additionally using QR codes to capture attendance data. Please note that data automatically captured via QR codes will still need to be manually entered into RISIS by teaching staff. Where this is the case, consideration in advance will need to be given to the potentially very significant volume of data captured (particularly for large sessions) and the process for transferring this data from MS forms/Excel into RISIS. 

Support Centre / Henley Programme Administration involvement in Attendance data collection

As per usual practice, Schools should discuss and agree an approach with their Support Centre Programme Manager / Henley Programme Administration Team for the collection and collation of attendance data for their School or Department that will give a good view of engagement at taught sessions.

Subject to discussion and advance agreement, Support Centres* / Henley Programme Administration staff will be able to:

  • Support teaching staff to access their class lists directly from RISIS (see RISIS/Working with modules),
  • Where resources permit, input some attendance data, from the following:
  1. Scanned hard copy registers into RISIS (or spreadsheets)
  2. Portable card reader data into spreadsheets
  3. Downloaded MS Teams registers into RISIS (or spreadsheets).
  4. QR code data into RISIS.
  • Support their School / Department with academic engagement through the usual collation of available data as agreed with the School / Department,
  • Support the International Student Advisory & Home Office Compliance team if they have queries in relation to the attendance and engagement of specific Tier 4 students/Student Route students.

*Note, advance agreement for Support Centres would need to be captured in the School/Support Centre Non-Standard Service Level Agreement for the School. The process for doing this is through discussion with the Head of your Support Centre.

Support Centre / Henley Programme Administration staff will not unfortunately be able to join a face to face teaching session to support the collection of attendance registers.

Attendance on campus - FAQ

Where is attendance recorded on RISIS?

In RISIS, attendance is recorded under Working with modules / Attendance and Engagement.

Changes were made at the start of the spring term 2020/21 to make this process quicker, more efficient, and less prone to errors. See RISIS Module Attendance Data Entry Improvements.

Combined Attendance Reports are available that bring together attendance that has been recorded in RISIS with automatically captured data from Blackboard Collaborate taught sessions. See Combined Attendance Reporting for more details.

Existing reports that show just RISIS attendance data either by student, module or school are also still available.

All attendance reports in RISIS are located in the Attendance & Engagement container.

How are Attendance Types set up on RISIS?

At the start of term, Support Centre/Henley programme administration teams should update the module attendance types for all relevant modules following information in the timetable (from 'Attendance 1, 2 & 3' to labels that are meaningful, such as 'Seminars' or 'Workshops'). This helps to distinguish between different types of teaching sessions on the module road map.

Tip: any subsequent changes to module attendance types will be reflected historically, so labels should be kept generic, avoiding any information that is dynamic.

When should spreadsheets be used to record attendance data?

Wherever possible RISIS should be used directly to record attendance at face-to face-teaching sessions.

For Departments who already have established attendance spreadsheets, these can continue to be used in 2023/24.

Support Centre teams can also set up attendance spreadsheets for use by Departments that have modules that are unable to use the RISIS attendance templates (for example, where there are more than 3 taught sessions for an individual student per week), however this should be the exception.

 

Attendance at Online Sessions

Blackboard Collaborate Teaching Sessions

Attendance at Blackboard Collaborate sessions will be automatically captured and there is no requirement for staff to take a register during the class.

Combined Attendance Reports are available that bring together automatically captured data from Blackboard Collaborate taught sessions with attendance that has been recorded in RISIS. See Combined Attendance Reporting for more details.

Session Attendance Reports that provide information on when attendees joined and left Collaborate sessions are also available in Blackboard. These can be found under Course Management, in Control Panel / Course Tools / Blackboard Collaborate Ultra.

The Blackboard Help for Staff web pages provide a guide on attendance reporting at Blackboard Collaborate scheduled sessions: Blackboard Collaborate: Monitoring Attendance.

It is also possible to view attendance at Blackboard Collaborate sessions that are in the unlocked course room. On the Blackboard Collaborate Ultra screen, select 'Session Options' against the unlocked course room and then 'View Reports'.

Teams Teaching Sessions

If required, Microsoft attendance reports for Teams sessions can be downloaded after the session ends. This can only be done by the meeting organiser.

Meeting Organisers can find the Microsoft attendance report in the meeting Chat or via the MS Teams calendar entry for the relevant session. The report will available about five minutes after the sessions ends.

For more information, please refer to the User Guide, MS Teams Attendance Report User Guide

Downloaded attendance reports will appear in the Downloads file on your PC and will be entitled 'meetingAttendanceReport (Meeting Title)'. They must be moved to an appropriate shared storage location within 48 hours and saved as an Excel spreadsheet or deleted.

The file will show all participants who joined the meeting, the date and time they joined, when they left and, if appropriate, a time they re-joined.

Teaching & programme administration staff should agree whether this data is entered into RISIS module attendance forms or transferred into attendance spreadsheets for the Department. Once data has been transferred, please delete any downloaded copies of the attendance report.

Combined Attendance Reporting; RISIS and Blackboard Collaborate data

Combined Attendance Reports have been developed to bring together attendance data recorded in RISIS with automatically captured data from Blackboard Collaborate taught sessions. They show collated attendance data for all of an individual student's modules, across a selected date range.

The reports can be accessed via RISIS under 'Working with Modules' / 'Attendance & Engagement', or via 'My Students' for Academic Tutors.

For more details Combined Attendance Report User Guide.

Attendance at Tutor Meetings

Academic Tutors must record the dates of meetings with tutees (either face-to-face or online) on RISIS.

Changes were made during the spring term 2020/21 to improve the way in which data is entered to capture attendance at an Academic Tutor meeting. This included a new option to record attendance via the 'My Students' list on RISIS.

For more information on these changes, please see RISIS Improvements Academic Tutorial Meetings User Guide.

There is also a tool on RISIS that allows tutors to record attendance at tutor meetings in bulk, rather than for each student individually. Please see the Recording Bulk Tutorial Attendance user guide for more information.