Google classroom has the ability to take attendance believe it or not. So if you debated whether or not to join your classes from home you may with to reconsider. Google Classroom has become more popular across the world since the COVID-19 outbreak, making it essential to mark attendance for class.
Taking attendance in Google Classroom is not designed to be difficult. It is easy by following these steps:
- Select Your Class
- Click Classwork Tab
- Taking a Register
- Create a Question
- Ask the Class
Google classroom gives you the ability to log on from home and complete work in a self paced way. Some classes though require your participation and attendance is still required as part of your grade. Google Classroom is a great source of communication between teachers and students to be able to do this.
To check for attendance is very simple and below I will show you how you can do it.
How to Take Attendance
As a teacher logging into Google Classroom, taking attendance is something every teacher will want to be able to do. This feature has not been added yet to Google Classroom but there is a simple work around for now.
Using the Question feature of Google Classrooms is how we do this and the article will walk you through exactly how to do it. There are a few things you need to know though when using questions for attendance.
It will only allow you to take attendance for the day and not for a specific time on that day though. For most of the classes you run this should be good enough.
One advantage of this method is to give students points for attending if you are putting it towards a passing grade as well. If you have live classes that are more important you can give them more points.
Questions are a great way to ask if they are ready to learn and in attendance, or if they are there but are having complications with the program or course, or if they simply just need help. This allows you to get a more personal feedback from each student and see where they are with the online teaching.
Using questions provides a permanent record of who attended the class that you can review later.
Select Your Class
The first step is to select your class. This screen will layout the various classes that you have previously created. The process is the same no matter what type of class you have created whether it is Math, Science or English.
Select the Classwork Tab
Now that you have chosen your class you will find yourself in the message Stream tab. You can then choose the Classwork tab to continue at the top of the screen.
This is where you can add the class work by clicking on the Create Button. Here you can see that you can create different types of content like Assignments, Quiz assignments, Questions, Material as well as reuse a post or add another Topic. Topics are used to group content.
To take attendance simply create another question by selecting the Question Option underneath the Create button.
On your first time into this page you will be prompted with the help to let you know you can post the question now or do it later so you can plan your work ahead. You can just click Got It and continue on.
Click a Question
The next thing you will do is post an attendance question for the students to respond to that are currently attending the class today. Keeping in mind that students that log in the same day but not right now will also be able to mark as attended.
If you haven’t already select the Create button in the course work section and select the Question option.
You now need to put in a question in the question box for your students to respond to.
An Example Question may be:
Attendance for Class X on DD/MM/YYYY
I would also suggest changing the question type to Multiple Choice so you don’t get weird and wonderful answers. It also makes it easier for you to understand where the students are at and will be easier to report on later.
To add the option merely click at the bottom of the question where it says Add Option and you can type in your responses. You can put in any other options you like but the following are fairly standard.
- I am here and ready to learn
- I am here but still setting up
- I need help
Now you can select the Due Date as todays date from the right hand menu so that they can not mark attendance at a later date. Keeping in mind that as mentioned before this question will be open until the end of the day.
You can also Assign Points if you like and you will see this is set to 100 points by default. You can also Select the Topic of todays class as well.
At the bottom of the right hand pane you can see the Students can see the class summary which I generally turn off with attendance. So you can go ahead and Uncheck “Students can see class summary”.
Ask the Class
Now that your question is complete you can click the Ask button at the top right of the page to make it available for your students to answer.
As your students answer, your screen will populate with those names who have answered the question on the left side of the screen. The students responses will appear on the right panel of the screen.
Maintaining Attendance
Teachers can easily take manual attendance sheets when teaching with Google Classroom using pen and paper. It is so much better to do it digitally and have it with the rest of the class records and submissions.
That is part why Google Classroom implements the features it does so the teachers can keep record of who is attending their class and motivate the students that they need to be present.
This also means that as a School or University with a Institution account with Google for Education it means that your attendance records stay with classes regardless of whether that particular teacher leaves.
Additional Features of Google Classroom
If you are new to Google Classroom here are some features you may also want to be aware of when you are running your first few online classes.
Google Hangouts
Google Hangouts is a tool much like Skype or Facebook Messenger that allows the Teacher and Students in a class to send messages and live video chat with each other. You can enable this in your class to increase engagement and collaboration between the teacher and students and between students.
Google Calendar
A shared google calendar means that you can set reminders for the class for when assigments are due or when live class sessions are being conducted. You can also put in public holidays and special events like online career fairs.
Google Drive
You can have a shared drive with your students to put files up to that they need to know about like class or subject outlines and marking sheets. You can also take advantage of Google Docs as a file type for the instead of students having to pay for Microsoft Office.
Classwork
The ability to assign classwork to students as assignments with due dates or just multimedia content to review is done under the Classwork Tab. There are multiple types of content you can add from there that we mentioned earlier in the article.
Students
The adding of students and the teacher to a class is an expected feature of all Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Google Classroom has the same feature.
Marks
This simple feature is another expected feature of a Learning Management System and is also available in Google Classroom. While not as fully featured as others on the market yet, they will no doubt get there.
The Future Of Teaching Online
With broadband internet and tools like Google Classroom classes are now much easier to run online. Most schools use a Learning Management System already for storing their classroom content but starting to teach live classrooms is becoming main stream.
This self paced learning style with eLearning and live class sessions is moving away from Teacher centric training to Student centric training.
Google Classroom helps relieve the stress from parents who would otherwise have to home school and makes it simple for the students. This also means that the teachers can work from home as well and still continue their classes.
Google Classroom is acting as a basic learning management system with some built in live elements that allow for semi-live online classes. While it has some catching up to do with the major competitors, it is free and easy to use.
What Next
If you like to understand the ways you can teach online you can check out this article that will explain all the other methods to you.
ARTICLE : How Can I Teach Online
