Creating Meeting Times in your Sections

To effectively use the Attendance functionality offered by Genius CE & Enterprise, it is essential first to set up meeting times or lessons for your Sections. This foundational step is crucial, as it enables accurate tracking of attendance.

To initiate the process of creating a Meeting Time, navigate to the Sections tab. Locate the specific section where you wish to add meeting times and click on it. This action will display the section’s profile. To modify the information contained within this profile, you should select the Edit Information option from the Sidebar related to your chosen section:

Next, click the "Add a meeting time" option. A floating window will appear, allowing you to select a day of the week, along with a start and end time, for the meetings associated with that section. For instance, you might decide that this particular section will convene on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 AM to 11 AM, as illustrated in the example above:

You can add as many meeting times as necessary. Once you've finished adding the meeting times that are needed, you'll be sure to click on Save before exiting the Edit Information window. This step is vital to ensure that all your changes are saved and accurately reflected in the system.

Logging Attendance Once Running

Having set up the meeting times for your section, the next step is to log or input your learners' attendance records into Genius CE or Enterprise. To accomplish this, you or your Instructors should return to the Sections tab. Click on the Sections tab and select the section for which you wish to take attendance. This action will prompt Genius CE or Enterprise to display the Attendance options.

By default, Genius CE & Enterprise provides the following attendance records:

• Present
• Excused Absence
• Unexcused Absence
• Exempt

It is important to note that this attendance logging process must be repeated for each Section where Meeting Times have been established, as well as for each Meeting Time defined within those sections.

To streamline this process, you can set the default Administrator Parameter (DEFAULT_ATTENDANCE_TYPE). By doing so, Genius CE & Enterprise will automatically assign an attendance status for each learner at each meeting time defined for every Section. This feature is especially useful for reducing the administrative burden on your instructors when it comes to taking attendance. For example, if your experience indicates that most learners typically attend their assigned classes, you can configure the DEFAULT_ATTENDANCE_TYPE parameter to “Present.” This allows your instructors to concentrate primarily on exceptions, such as learners who are absent from class. Conversely, if the norm is that most learners tend to be no-shows, you could set this parameter to “Unexcused Absence,” enabling your instructors to focus on documenting the attendance of those who did attend the lesson.

What do the different Attendance statuses mean?

As previously mentioned, Genius CE & Enterprise allows you to define an attendance status for each learner corresponding to each meeting time established for every section. The various statuses available within Genius CE & Enterprise are detailed in the table below:

The attendance status assigned to each learner during each meeting time will serve as critical data points for the Attendance reports, which are elaborated on in the section below.

Running Reports vs. Attendance

Lastly, you will want to generate Reports that analyze your learners’ attendance patterns. You can access the Attendance reports included within Genius CE & Enterprise by navigating to the Attendance tab in the Sidebar. These reports can be generated based on:

• Learner, which displays all attendance records associated with a specific learner across all sections in which that learner is enrolled;
• Section, which shows all attendance records linked to a particular Section (an instance of a course) across all learners;
• Affiliation, which presents the attendance records of all learners grouped by a specific Affiliation across all Sections in which they are enrolled.

These reports can be customized to focus on a specific date range, which is particularly useful given that attendance entries can accumulate significantly over time. This feature enables you to quickly determine whether a learner attended their assigned classes within a specified timeframe.