Taking Attendance with ChimeIn

ChimeIn can provide an easy way to check attendance in your class, especially when using the Canvas integration.

We recommend creating a single assignment in Canvas for your weekly attendance questions. This will result in one entry in your gradebook, which you can assign however many points you'd like. Students will get credit for the overall percentage of attendance prompts they answer over the course of the semester.

During each class session, when you're ready to ask the attendance question, encourage your students to visit the course Canvas website and then follow the link for the attendance assignment. As the instructor, you can do the same thing - you'll automatically be taken to the instructor view. Click the play button next to the question you'd like to ask, and then click the open button. It will appear automatically for your students. Once they've had a chance to respond, click the close button. You can click the "view results" button at any time to see responses as they come in.

Participation data syncs to the Canvas gradebook approximately 3 hours after the last response is received. As an example of how grading works, if you have 15 participation questions over the course of a semester, and a student responds to 13 of them, ChimeIn will let Canvas know that the student received 86% credit (13/15). Canvas will then convert that into a point value based on whatever you entered for the assignment. If you've got questions, please contact us and we'll help get you setup.

Limitations of taking attendance with ChimeIn

Keep in mind, there's nothing technically preventing a student from responding to these prompts when not in the classroom. They won't know what time you'll be asking the question, and the question will only be available for a short time, so it's pretty inconvenient, but not technically impossible.