In EchoPoll, instructors can take course attendance with learners to ensure learners are present for learning activities. We provide the ability to check in with or without enforcing that learners are within a geographical area for check-in.
To take attendance, you must first have a course and have learners rostered in that course. Once you have a course with rostered learners, you can take attendance at any time from the Results tab within your course home.
Take Attendance
- Log in to EchoPoll with your instructor account.
- From My Dashboard, scroll down and select your desired course from My Courses.
- From My Courses, select the course you wish to take attendance in.
- From within the course home, click on the Results tab and select the Attendance tab, as shown in the figure below.
- Click Take Attendance to take attendance.
The Attendance table opens.
Your learners who have logged in and accessed your course are prompted to check in for attendance.
- As learners check in, they will appear in the Attendance table, as shown in the figure below.
- Click Close Attendance to end your attendance check. You will be shown a summary of your attendance check and will be prompted to name the record, as shown in the figure below.
- Optionally, rename the Record.
- Click Save.
You will see which learners checked in and which did not, as shown in the figure below.
You can now return here to view your attendance in the future or view your attendance records aggregated by learner from the My Reports tab on the Participants tab.
To learn more about the My Reports tab, please refer to our article on the topic at Instructor Reports in EchoPoll
Take Location-Based Attendance
You can specify a geographic area that your learners must be within when setting up attendance for your course. Learners must be within this geographic area to successfully check-in for attendance.
This attendance check is dependent on the learner's browser geo-location, so please ensure the learners allow our website to see their location when prompted in their browsers.
Chrome Site Settings, under Privacy and security, has an option to prevent sites from seeing your location. When set, learners won't be prompted to allow our website to see their location. Make sure it is set to "Sites can ask for your location".
If you do not want sites asking for your location, you can select the URL from Chrome Site Settings (it will either appear in Recent Activity or you can select "View permissions and data stored across sites"). From there, you can choose to Ask, Allow, or Block.
- Log in to EchoPoll with your instructor account.
- From My Dashboard, scroll down and select your desired course from My Courses.
- From My Courses, select the course you wish to take attendance in.
- From within the course home, click on the Results tab and select the Attendance tab, as shown in the figure below.
- Click Set Location.
The Attendance Location Settings modal opens.
- Turn on Enforce Location to enable location-based attendance.
- Set the Location for the learners.
- Select a radius from the Acceptable Range drop-down.
- Click Save.
Edit Attendance
After attendance has been taken, instructors can update a learner's Attendance Status. This allows instructors to accurately reflect valid absences due to illness, family emergencies, or other approved reasons. This flexibility supports fairness in grading and participation policies and ensures transparency in learner records.
- Find the row of the learner whose attendance you want to change.
- Find the column of the attendance record you want to change.
- Click the attendance record.
- From the drop-down, select a new Attendance Status.
- Click Save.
The attendance record is updated, as shown in the figure below.