## Setting Up Your Quickly Attendance Roster: A Step-by-Step Guide

This guide walks you through the basics of setting up your Quickly attendance roster, as explained by an Instructional Designer at Kennebec Valley Community College (KVCC). Note that specific menu names or locations may vary slightly depending on your institution.

**Step 1: Accessing Quickly Attendance**

1.  **Locate the Quickly Attendance button:** Look for a button in your course navigation menu that says "Quickly," "Quickly Attendance," or simply "Attendance." It might also be listed under a "Resources" button or an expanded menu (three dots).
2.  **Click the button:** This should take you to your Quickly account.

**Step 2: Initial Setup (First-Time Users)**

1.  **Account Setup:** The first time you access Quickly for a course, the setup screen will appear.

**Step 3: Configuring User Sorting (Settings)**

1.  **Navigate to Settings:** In your Quickly account, find the "Settings" area.
2.  **Choose User Sorting:** Select how you want students to be sorted in your roster. "Last Name" is recommended as it typically aligns with how Brightspace (or your LMS) displays course lists.

**Step 4: Displaying Absence Totals (Optional)**

1.  **Absence Totals:** In settings, there is an option to show the total number of absences on the attendance screen.
2.  **Enable the setting:** Check the box to display a number next to each student's name, indicating the number of classes they've missed (0 for perfect attendance, 1 for one absence, etc.).

**Step 5: Setting View Preferences for Records**

1.  **Rounding Grades:** You can choose to round grades to the nearest whole number.
2.  **Showing Dropped Students:** Decide whether to show dropped students in the record. The instructor recommends leaving this blank, as they no longer track attendance for dropped students.

**Step 6: Understanding Attendance Statuses**

1.  **Default Statuses:** Quickly typically provides default attendance statuses like Present, Absent, Excused, and Tardy.
2.  **Commentary:** There's usually an option to add commentary for each status.
3.  **Default "Present":** Students are automatically marked as "Present" until you change their status.
4.  **Absent:** Selecting "Absent" typically assigns a zero in the points category (color-coded).
5.  **Excused:** "Excused" (or "Exempted") excludes the absence from the overall attendance score calculation.
6.  **Tardy:** "Tardy" (T) can be used to deduct partial points. For example, if a student is 30 minutes late to a 60-minute class, you might enter "50" (representing 50% attendance).

**Step 7: Grading Options**

1.  **Grading Section:** This is where you configure how attendance impacts the Brightspace gradebook (if at all).
2.  **Choose a Grading Option:**
    *   **Total Points:** Only one column in the gradebook that fluctuates based on attendance scores.
    *   **Points per session:** Breaks out each session based on a specific point value for that session.

**Step 8: Configuring Absence-Based Grading (Optional)**

1.  **Absence-Based Grading:** You can set up Quickly to deduct points based on the number of absences.

**Step 9: Integrating with Brightspace Gradebook**

1.  **Set up the gradebook:** Go to the gradebook and click manage grades, select all, and bulk edit.
2.  **Categorize the Attendance Column:** In Brightspace, ensure the attendance column from Quickly is correctly categorized so that it is factored into the overall grade calculation with the correct weight.
3.  **Consult Resources:** If you're unsure how to set up your gradebook, consult Brightspace documentation or reach out to your institution's support (kvccbolts@maincc.edu for KVCC faculty).

**Step 10: Entering Attendance**

1.  **Access the Course Roster:** Go to the area where you enter attendance and view your course roster.
2.  **Mark Attendance:** Change the status of students who are absent, tardy, or excused. Remember that students are defaulted to "Present."
3.  **Add Comments (Optional):** Use the comment section to add notes about specific attendance instances (e.g., "John was 10 minutes late to class today but he had a medical note.")