Roll Call is an attendance tool integrated with ICON (Canvas) courses that can be used to record attendance. It also has a seating chart tool which can be used to record where students sit.
Roll Call and Seating Charts
The Office of Teaching, Learning, and Technology and ITS do not recommend using Roll Call for tracking which seats students sit in because:
- Only the instructor can record which seats students sit in. Students can't record their own attendance or seat.
- The points Roll Call gives students is not incremental. Students receive a score of 100% for Roll Call when attendance is first recorded, and start losing points if they are marked as absent.
- Once Roll Call is set up, it’s difficult to change.
- Roll Call doesn't allow for editing the seating chart. If a student sits in row one seat one on Monday and then row six seat two on Tuesday, there’s no way to reflect this change.
- Seating chart data can't be exported from Roll Call, only present or absent status can be exported.
If instructors choose to use Roll Call, they should be aware that:
- Once you activate Roll Call by taking attendance, it creates an assignment named Roll Call. Do not change the name of the assignment, unpublish the assignment, or delete the assignment, as this will cause problems with Roll Call. Learn what to do if you need to edit the Roll Call assignment.
- It is important to communicate with their class on how they are using this tool and how Roll Call will appear in the gradebook.
- Roll Call will create an assignment which appears in the ICON gradebook, which by default is included in the final grade.
- If you do not want Roll Call included in the final grade:
- Click Attendance in your course navigation.
- Click the settings gear in the upper right.
- Select Roll Call settings.
- Check do not count attendance toward final grade and close the window.
