Set up Qwickly

First log in

To access Qwickly within Canvas, go to your Course Navigation Menu > Qwickly Attendance.

If you don’t see Qwickly Attendance in the course navigation menu, you can turn it on by selecting Settings, Navigation in your course menu and then drag the Qwickly Attendance menu item up to be visible.

The first time you access Qwickly, you will be prompted to authorise Qwickly to make actions on your behalf. Click ‘authorise’ to continue.

Subject sites with over 100 students will be prompted to pre-load students before beginning setup. If you are prompted, click the ‘Load enrollments’ button to begin a background process which starts to pre-load the user information for your course so subsequent launches happen quicker. Since this process may take up to five minutes, it is suggested that you wait a few minutes after clicking ‘Load Enrollments’ before beginning the course setup. When ready click the Begin Setup button. 

You will be presented with the Qwickly Take Attendance List view. Important Note: You may not see your list of students on first launch of the Qwickly Attendance tool. Try navigating to Settings and back to the List view. 

For section or group-based attendance

Qwickly Attendance in Canvas allows instructors to take attendance for groups or sections of students in a course. The Attendance tool allows an instructor to change their attendance taking mode in a course if groups or sections are detected.

By default, groups/sections are NOT a visible option in the Qwickly Attendance tool even if you have groups/sections in your Canvas course. You will need to save the Qwickly settings once to connect the sections/groups and thus make sections/groups visible to Qwickly Attendance tool.

To enable course groups/sections attendance in Qwickly:

1. Launch Qwickly Attendance from the course navigation menu.
2. To connect groups/sections from Canvas to Qwickly, scroll down to the bottom of the settings page and click Save Settings. You don’t need to make any changes at this stage. Simply clicking Save Settings once will trigger the groups/sections connection from Canvas to Qwickly Attendance. 
3. Launch Qwickly Attendance from the course navigation menu again. Under Settings > Preferences, there will be a new setting labelled Student Grouping which will allow you to take attendance by course groups or course sections.

5. Once the desired student group or section option is selected, go to Save Settings at the bottom of the page.
6. Navigate to Attendance > List.
7. A ‘Section’ drop-down for groups or sections should now be available.
8. Select the desired group/section for which attendance needs to be taken. This will change the roster and only show users who are part of the selected group/section.

To change between single list/groups/sections attendance in Qwickly:

1. Launch Qwickly Attendance from the course navigation menu.
2. Navigate to Settings > Preferences.
3. Choose the organisation method from ‘Student Grouping’ – either Single List, By Course Groups, or By Course Section.
4. Click ‘Save Settings’ at the bottom of the page.

Qwickly in Gradebook

Qwickly is integrated with Canvas to record attendance within the Canvas Gradebook. Here we show you the basic setup for using Qwickly Attendance.

Important!

Delete any rolled-over Qwickly Attendance Gradebook assignments and columns.

When Qwickly Gradebook integration is turned on, a new Gradebook assignment and column is automatically created for each session. We recommend that you delete any Qwickly Attendance Gradebook assignments and columns rolled over from a previous session. Otherwise, subject sites may show multiple attendance columns and assignments.

Qwickly in Gradebook as percentage (non-weighted)

To show attendance as a percentage, but with a zero weighting so it doesn’t affect students’ grades, follow these steps.

1. Launch Qwickly Attendance from the course navigation menu.
2. Navigate to Settings > Grading.
3. Check the ‘Session Based Grading Column’ option.
4. Leave or change ‘Points’ to ‘100.00’.
5. Click ‘Save Settings’ at the bottom of the page.
6. Go to Canvas > your subject > Assignments. Create a new Assignment group, name it Attendance, and move the attendance assignment into it. Leave this assignment group with a 0% weighting.
7. You can check that this has worked after the first time you use Qwickly to take attendance. Navigate to Canvas > your course > Marks. Look for the ‘Qwickly Attendance’ column. Here student attendance will be shown as a percentage.

Qwickly in Gradebook as negative mark

If you would prefer to see absences at a glance, rather than attendance as a percentage, you can show Qwickly attendance in Canvas Gradebook as a negative mark:

1. Launch Qwickly Attendance from the course navigation menu.
2. Navigate to Settings > Grading.
3. Select the ‘Absence Based Grading Column’ option.
4. In the ‘Points Per Absence’ field enter ‘-1’. This will allow you to see one negative number to represent every absence.
5. Click ‘Save Settings’ at the bottom of the page.

6. Go to Canvas > your subject > Assignments. Create a new Assignment group, name it Attendance, and move the attendance assignment into it. Leave this assignment group with a 0% weighting.
7. To check that this has worked, navigate to Canvas > your course > Marks. Look for the ‘Absences’ column. Here a student who is absent for nine days, for example, will show a score of ‘-9’.

Qwickly attendance marks (weighted)

If attendance contributes towards students’ final marks you  will need to add a weighting to the Attendance assignment group.

However note that you will only be able to use Qwickly where attendance is assessed. For example, of students receive a mark for attending tutorials you can use Qwickly only for tutorials.

1. Launch Qwickly Attendance from the course navigation menu.
2. Click Settings.
3. From ‘Grade Center Integration’ select ‘Total Points’.
4. Leave or change ‘Points’ to ‘100.00’.
5. Click ‘Save Settings’ at the bottom of the page.
6. Go to Canvas > your subject > Assignments. Create a new Assignment group, name it Attendance, and move the attendance assignment into it. Change the assignment group weighting to the appropriate percentage.

7. You can check that this has worked after the first time you use Qwickly to take attendance. Navigate to Canvas > your course > Marks. Look for the ‘Attendance’ column and the ‘Attendance’ assignment group columns. Here student attendance will be shown as a percentage.

Qwickly Check-in Settings

You can allow your students to check in to class on their own devices. Checking in allows you to skip manually taking attendance and gives students recognition for being in class when they self check-in. As part of the student self check-in feature you can also opt to use an auto generated four-digit PIN code and/or a count-down timer. 

Important!

If taking Attendance by Check-in mode, only one group/section check-in can run at a time. If you start your check-in at the same time another group/section runs their check-in you will need to try again later. To avoid this happening, you may want to coordinate the time concurrent check-ins are scheduled so they don’t clash at exactly the same time.

To manage your Check-in settings:

1. Launch Qwickly Attendance from your Canvas course menu.
2. Select Settings > Preferences.
3. In the Check-in section you can opt to turn ‘on’ or ‘off’ the use of an automatically generated PIN.
4. You can also set a check-in timer. By default the timer is set to 0 (zero) which means it is turned off.
5. Click Save Settings at the bottom of the page. (If you navigate away from the settings page without saving, you will lose any changes.) 

Attendance Statuses

System Statuses

System Attendance Statuses are built in statuses you can use to take attendance. You cannot modify system statuses however, you can either leave them on or turn them off. 

1. Launch Qwickly Attendance from your Canvas course menu. 
2. Select Settings > Attendance Status. 
3. Select Save Settings at the bottom of the page. 

Custom Course Statuses

You can add custom attendance statuses to Qwickly in your course. To reduce potential confusion, it is recommended that you:

• keep it simple when adding additional statuses
• take into consideration other courses the student is in that might also be using Qwickly Attendance 
• inform your students about the way you intend on recording attendance in your Course Outline

Order: The order in which the statuses appear when listed in a course
Name: The name of the status
Points: The percentage value of the points this status is worth
Absence: The percentage value of the absence this status is worth
Color: The color assigned to the status
Delete: Remove a custom-made status
Add status: Add a new custom-made status