I just installed version ver 2.0.2 of Attendance for the first time and am having some problems. I will list them in order of importance, so please answer any you have knowledge about. I am running Moodle 1.8.2 and PHP 4.4.6 on host bluehost.com.
1) I was able to add the Attendance as an activity on the main Moodle page, but was not able to see it in the Activities menus in any of the courses. All I can see are the standard modules and then modulename at the bottom of the menu. Any ideas how to get this into the individual courses?
2) I can probably deal with having everyone take attendance on the main page rather than in their courses since this is a small K-8 school. But I would like to order the students by classes to make it easier for the teachers. Is there any way to order the students by group rather than alphabetically in the attendance list? Is there a way to show only particular groups in the list, not everyone who is enrolled?
3) Whenever I go to export the attendance lists to Excel or another format, I get an error that says "Students Not Found!". Any ideas?
4) Is there an easy way to remove the feature where you can change the status for everyone by just clicking on the code (e.g., clicking on P changes everyone's status to Present) or should I just look through the code any remove that feature? I'm not a php programmer, so any hints as to where to find this would be helpful.
4) I am not able to access the help files for Attendance. When I click on the ? it says "File Not Found". The help files are currently in /moodle/blocks/attendance/lang/en_us_utf8/help/block_attendance and I also put them in the same place in en_utf8 and in /moodle/lang/en_us_utf8/help/block_attendance. Permissions are 0644 or 0744. Where should they be? Also, there is no file updateattendance.html, although this is the one called for by the question mark at the top of the attendance page.
Thanks in advance.
Jan
Hi,
I have also added in the attendance function.
I have had no problems adding that same attendance feature to each and every one of my courses without a problem.
I would like to know how to correct the modulenameplural and modulename labelling problem in "add activity" and "activity" block. If you get an answer on that I would appreciate some help on that too.
Patti
Did you install the language files in the appropriate language folder? Those files are included with the download, but you usually need to put a copy of the language file in en_utf8 or whichever language pack you are using. This should clear up the [] problem.
atw
As I see it, there are two fixes. You can move the contents of the lang folder into their the base lang folders, or you can follow the "new" format of having self-contained packages by moving (or copying) the language files for the mod into the mod folder. I prefer the latter approach (easier to troubleshoot language issues IMHO), so here is my simple fix:
Copy (not move) the lang folder from blocks/attendance/ to mod/attforblock/
If you are in a UNIX environment, then my recommendation is to navigate to your Moodle installation directory (that is, the directory with admin, auth, backup, blocks, et al.) and type the following commands:
mkdir mod/attforblock/lang
cp -R blocks/attendance/lang/* mod/attforblock/lang/.
This does lead to a duplicate language file in each folder, but is less work than moving half of the language files one at a time!
Hello! I need to bring up that topic again as I have one question concering the following:
(quote by Richard)
There is a second, better, way to accomplish this. Select "Attendance" from the pull-down menu in the "Blocks" block. This will create a block with options to take attendance, report on attendance, or change the attendance settings for you, and an attendance report for students.
Does that mean, I would see the "attendance" here under blocks? I don't see it and I did not understand how:
I only see the attendence here:
Where and how can I create a block called "attendance" what Richard mentioned in his explanation?
I would be happy if someone can help me!
Best wishes,
Hanna
P.S. I am an admin with all edit rights in the Moodle...
Hanna,
First a correction to what I wrote. Don't hide (close the eye icon) the attendance activity or students won't be able to see their attendance details in any fashion. I didn't realize it caused a visibility problem for students.
OK, now that I have corrected that, to add the block you must be on the main page for your course and in edit mode. At the bottom of the left column you should see the "Blocks" block (Blocks are the boxes on the left and right side of your Moodle page). From the drop-down menu select Attendance as shown in the figure below and it will add the Attendance block.
Richard
Dear Richard,
thanks for the answer! I found it! Very good, thanks!
Best wishes,
Hanna
I'm glad you found it since, apparently, I still get my left and right confused!
2) You can use groups, but right now the groups are shown by group number rather than group name. The group function works like other areas using groups--you should force groups in your course settings, enroll students into the groups, and then use the drop down box to see all or a particular group.
3) If your excel export says there are no students, then I would look for a reason why the activity/block is not picking up students. Perhaps you haven't enrolled them into the course, or perhaps they haven't been enrolled into their groups? I can tell you that the export does work properly on my system.
4) In my experience, being able to mark the majority of the students at once (click the P and get them all!) and then change the few who are not present is much less clicking. If you don't want to use the letters at the top, then you can simply click each radio button in the list. If you want to hack it, you can certainly do that. My recollection is that the code is documented well enough. I tend to see that as a feature, though.
5) We were working on some additional helpfiles in another thread. They might not have made it into cvs. Look for other threads in this forum about attendance 1.8 and you might find them. Do you think the permissions problem is creating the [] display? That is interesting.
Hope some of that helped!
atw
Thanks for the quick reply.
You are right. I did not install the language file. Where can I find the download?
Patti
atw
AT,
I'm using Attendance 2.02 on Moodle 1.83+ and I've found that the Excel download from the Report tab just produces a list of student ids. However, the OpenOffice format download file contains all the student and attendance data. Bizarre but a bug methinks.
MArk
atw
Hi atw,
trying to install an attendance activity and following your point 1 above..i have downloaded the attendance software and now have 2 folders, "blocks" and "mod". you say,one, install the activity which goes in the mod folder - forgive my ignorance but when you say activity what do you mean. I take it the mod folder is the one already on the server. The "blocks" folder, is that one i downloaded and i take it that would go into the block folder on the server. three, install the language files, which go in the appropriate language folder - i have a language folder inside the blocks folder i downloaded. is that the lang folder you refer to?
Thanks for any help
ben
When you unzip the block_attendance_for_v19, it should create a folder (my Mac names it block_attendance_for_v19 Folder--how convenient with two subfolders named blocks and mod. If you look at your Moodle installation, you will see that among the many subfolders in the Moodle folder, you again have folders named blocks and mod. The idea is that you copy the contents of the block_attendance_for_v19/blocks folder into your moodle/blocks folder (so you will have a moodle/blocks/attendance/ folder with all of the files and subfolders copied as well) and likewise copy the contents of the block_attendance_for_v19/mod folder into your moodle/mod folder.
What I wrote above is one of two ways to fix an oversight in the language folder. Moodle has a general language folder with language files. "In the old days" you copied the contents of block_attendance_for_v19/blocks/attendance/lang into the moodle/lang folder, and all will worked correctly. This still works, but is not the preferred way anymore (at least for me).
Moodle now allows you to keep the language files with the mods and blocks so they are self-contained and you don't have to fiddle around with language files. I prefer this method because it is easier organization (to my way of thinking). However, the language folder in block_attendance_for_v19/mod/attforblock is missing (the file attforblock.php that should be in this missing language folder is instead in the attendance language folder). As a result, attforblock does not have its ten (yes, only ten) strings defined. This is very noticeable because the modulename and modulenameplural strings (the labels that show up in the main course page) are defined here.
So, without either following my instructions in the previous post or doing it the old way, you are going to see modulename and modulenameplural where the author intends you to see Attendance and Attendances.
(Personal note, I recommend editing the ...lang/en_utf8/attforblock.php language file and replacing each occurrence of Attendances with Attendance. Some dictionaries say that attendances is the plural form of attendance while others say there is no plural form. I am more comfortable with the latter.)
Richard
ps--Should we put this in the documentation wiki? If you don't care to do it, let me know and I will add the text. I think there is a page for the attendance module.
atw
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Attendance_module
and see if it makes sense. I edited and consolidated your instructions from multiple replies. Hopefully, I got it all!
Do PM if you have suggestions for improvement.
atw
Ben
Hi,
I have installed the Attendance module on Moodle 1.9, followed the steps given on forum. I am able to see the Attendance activity and block in Moodle. However, it is not automatic ie, when a student takes up the course, attendance is not marked. Is there any setting to be done?
Please help.
Thanks in advance.
Actually, the Attendance Module is a "manual" attendance taking system--not automatic. It is designed for a teacher to click on buttons to record attendance. This approach is ideal for our school, because we also maintain a paper attendance book as the final authority. The online Attendance Module allows students to see their own status at any time.
If you need an automatic version for a computer lab, I have heard of ones. You might check the Modules and Plugins database or contact Tom Robb who has built his own version.
With regards,
Don
But, assuming that you indeed want to take attendance in the traditional sense, here are some instructions on how to get started with the attendance module. After successfully installing the attendance module (including a visit to the admin page to make sure the database is properly set up--I don't know if this mod requires it but I do that as a matter of course any time I install a new or updated mod just to be safe), you must add attendance as an activity to each course you wish to keep attendance in. This is done by first ensuring that you are in the edit mode and then selecting, "Attendance" from the "Add an activity..." pull-down menu. Note that you may only add the attendance activity once per class and it may be located in any of the section blocks. Because attendance is for the entire course, I generally put it in the top box (the one that always shows).
Once you have added the attendance activity, you are ready to start using the attendance module. However, I find the section link that was just added in the preceding paragraph to be the "clunky way" to work with the attendance module. In fact, I hide the link I just created! That way students don't see it cluttering up the section block where you placed it. Of course, we DO want students to be able to view their attendance records, just not with that link. There is a second, better, way to accomplish this. Select "Attendance" from the pull-down menu in the "Blocks" block. This will create a block with options to take attendance, report on attendance, or change the attendance settings for you, and an attendance report for students.
So, time to set up your attendance. The clear choice now is to select "Settings" from the attendance block. This brings you to the letters, descriptions, and grade (points) to assign for the four attendance options. By default these are Present, Absent, Late, and Excused. I prefer the word Tardy to Late (same meaning, of course) and I prefer Tardy before Absent, so I make appropriate changes here to the names, order, and grades.
Next it is time to add sessions. Note that there is a restriction here. You can only have one session per day. Since you can only have one attendance activity installed (which means that I cannot have a lab attendance activity and a lecture attendance activity) and can only have one attendance session per day, if you have more than one class session per day you will have to be creative in taking attendance. And if you have more than seven class sessions for a single class in a week--then you are overworked!
To add class sections, click the "Add" tab (second from left) at the top of the page (if you left the attendance page, select any of the three links from the attendance block to return to the attendance page and gain access to the "Add" tab). You have two options here, to add a single session or to add multiple sessions. The single session is self-explanatory so I will go straight the more useful option, how to add multiple sessions. Choose the date for the first session you wish to add followed by the date for the last session you wish to add. Next select the days of the week on which the class meets. The final option, frequency, may look confusing but it is actually straight-forward. This is an option that you only need to concern yourself with if your class doesn't meet every week. If your class meets every week (the normal situation) then you want a frequency of 1 week which is the default. If your class meets every other week, then you want a frequency of 2 weeks, and so on. When you click the "Add multiple sessions" button, your sessions will be created and you will see a message indicating this.
Now head to the attendance tab. Here you see the list of all attendance sessions you have added. You can delete individual sessions by clicking the X to the right of them. (Personal note, it sure would be nice if there was an option to select a few sessions and delete them all at once--I use the multiple sessions option to put my sessions in for the entire semester and then have to go and remove sessions for vacation days one at a time.) You can edit a session (change the date or add a description) with the standard hand icon to the right of the session, or you can take attendance for a session by clicking the green radio button to the right of the session. Sessions where attendance has already been taken do not have the green button, but instead the description is a link that takes you to the screen to modify the attendance record for that session.
A quick note on attendance session descriptions. I used to spend a lot of time editing each one to give the appropriate description for that class period. But then I discovered that the students don't see the descriptions I entered--all they see is "Regular class session" regardless of the session description. Thus I do not recommend spending the time to name the sessions unless you will get confused without them.
You will note that the column headings in the page for taking attendance are links. If you click one of these column headings, all students will have their status changed to the status you selected. Thus, if everyone is absent (God forbid!), you merely click the A and it will change everyone's status to absent. If Little Johnny is the only student absent, you would logically click P to set everyone to present and then go down to Little Johnny and change his status to A. Enter remarks as appropriate (I enter the reason for an absence if known or the minutes late if someone is tardy) and click OK to complete taking record.
Finally, you have the reports. This is, again, obvious. One of my colleagues prefers to take record on paper and transfer it to Moodle. She suggested printing the monthly report before the start of the month and then taking record on this report. It has an added advantage because you have each student's picture with the record sheet. Of course, that is only useful for students who actually put photos of themselves in for their picture.
A final note here. If you added the attendance block as I recommended, you may wonder what it looks like for students. It is completely different--showing a summary of their attendance record and having a single link for them to view the details of their personal attendance. Another reason why I think the attendance block should always be added when you use the attendance module.
And unlike my previous post on how to install the attendance module, short and succinct could never be used to describe this message
Good luck!
Richard
This is fabulous stuff! Shall we put it in the wiki??
atw
Richard
Hi guys,
having a couple of probs uploading these files. I ftped (with filezilla - cpanel seems to only allow you to upload individual files) the attendance folder inside the block folder into moodle/blocks and then the mod folder into moodle/mod. then i go to look to copy the lang from attendance to attforblock via cpanel and it's not there. Also moodle says that it cant find the db - cos it's not there. Has this got something to do with the ftp process whereby it only ftps files?
thanks
ben
Your description of the download process has me a little confused (and thus I suspect that may be the problem). The download is a single (zipped) file. Select the appropriate version from http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=1062 and then unzip it. The unzipped file should have the folders and files that you say are missing.
Richard
ben
OK Richard - all sorted and have now got a course attendance bloc working. one thing - not sure if you broached how to upload a class list in your "how to" description..
Thanks
ben
Richard
Re: Problems with Attendance Module--Language problem resolved
Great work Dmitry!
Richard
Re: Problems with Attendance Module--Language problem resolved
Re: Problems with Attendance Module--Language problem resolved
Re: Problems with Attendance Module--Language problem resolved
You can set up the sessions however you want. If you want daily, that should work. I have some that are twice a week and some that are three times a week. You should be able to create whatever you need when you first set it up!
atw
Re: Problems with Attendance Module--Language problem resolved
I downloaded the package for the Attendance module (download for moodle 1.9+) and am using it for moodle 2.0.1.I copied the attendance folder into moodle/blocks folder and the attforblock folder into moodle/mod folder.Also I copied the lang folder from the downloaded blocks folder and pasted it in the moodle/lang folder according to the steps given above.Despite this when I login to the moodle site as administrator and click the notification button I am getting "modulename" in the "Add an activity dropdown list" instead of "Attendance".What to do?
Hi Thulasi,
The attendance module is still being worked in order to be Moodle 2.0 compatible. I don't think it should work in its present form.
I suppose that a news annoucement will be posted into the forum when a test version is ready.
Take care!
Hi Luis,
Thanks for the reply because, I was struggling from yesterday to fix the problem.
The attendance module is not working it showing out of date for moodle 2.0.2 can any one help me
Thanks in Advance
Just browse to this URL (look into the attachment section).
Sergey Vidusov updated the stable version of the module (2.1.0) to be Moodle 2.0 compatible. Beware: if you installed a beta version before you should delete the old attendance tables before installing the new module.
Best regards!
So happy this is available for 2.0. Installed and having no problems.
Two questions:
1) When I click on sessions, the dates are day, month, year which is confusing for teachers here in Japan. Can that be switched in a php file to month, date, year? Where would I look?
2) I have groups set in my classes, and in the Attendence module, but when I try to take attendence I have the entire class list to look through. I can choose from separate groups, see picture, but the entire class list is still shown. Can this be fixed?
Thanks,
Jeff
Please I want to know how her knee and installed the update in detail because I tried very much
Hi, I find two zip files in this URL. Which is the appropriate folder among the two that would allow me to add an attendance module in moodle 2.0 version?
Hi,
Has the attendance Module for Moodle 2.0 problem resolved?
thanks
Is this functional on Moodle 2.0?
The Moodle 2.0 docs references discussions from 2008 and does not timestamp any discussions or information [is it current, is it old? Read about a dozen pages and guess ]
This discussion seems to have a resolution, but the posts are from May. A 'new' update was in July 2011. That zip file doesn't have the directories referenced in the readme.txt file. One of the github locations that is supposed to be 'current' has the project listed as 'unresolved'
Quote: Place the "attendance" directory in your blocks directory, "attforblock" directory in your mod directory
It doesn't have 'attforblock' directory. Assuming root of the zip is 'attendance' there is a block_attendance.php file - Is that supposed to be the one called "attforblock" ? Should that directory be created as 'attforblock' and the file moved into that directory, or does it depend on another block from a different location?
Sorry for all the Q's, but it's frustrating trying to guess on versions, knowing a mistake can corrupt your installation.
If anyone can shed some light on this, I'd sure appreciate it- and I know lots of others would welcome the information.
Thanks.
- John
More info...
Installed the 'attendance_fixed.zip' code from the #CONTRIB-2196 into Moodle 2.0.5 (http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/CONTRIB-2196)
Here are the errors:
mod_attforblock
- line 3300 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to debugging()
- line 3397 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to load_capability_def()
- line 515 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to update_capabilities()
- line 271 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins_modules()
- line 1427 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins()
- line 311 of /admin/index.php: call to upgrade_noncore()
- line 1703 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to debugging()
- line 3471 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to assign_legacy_capabilities()
- line 515 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to update_capabilities()
- line 271 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins_modules()
- line 1427 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins()
- line 311 of /admin/index.php: call to upgrade_noncore()
- line 1703 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to debugging()
- line 3471 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to assign_legacy_capabilities()
- line 515 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to update_capabilities()
- line 271 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins_modules()
- line 1427 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins()
- line 311 of /admin/index.php: call to upgrade_noncore()
- line 1703 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to debugging()
- line 3471 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to assign_legacy_capabilities()
- line 515 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to update_capabilities()
- line 271 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins_modules()
- line 1427 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins()
- line 311 of /admin/index.php: call to upgrade_noncore()
- line 1703 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to debugging()
- line 3471 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to assign_legacy_capabilities()
- line 515 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to update_capabilities()
- line 271 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins_modules()
- line 1427 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins()
- line 311 of /admin/index.php: call to upgrade_noncore()
- line 1703 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to debugging()
- line 3471 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to assign_legacy_capabilities()
- line 515 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to update_capabilities()
- line 271 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins_modules()
- line 1427 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins()
- line 311 of /admin/index.php: call to upgrade_noncore()
- line 1703 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to debugging()
- line 3471 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to assign_legacy_capabilities()
- line 515 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to update_capabilities()
- line 271 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins_modules()
- line 1427 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins()
- line 311 of /admin/index.php: call to upgrade_noncore()
- line 1703 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to debugging()
- line 3471 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to assign_legacy_capabilities()
- line 515 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to update_capabilities()
- line 271 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins_modules()
- line 1427 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins()
- line 311 of /admin/index.php: call to upgrade_noncore()
Any ideas?
Updated/replaced the May 2011 code with the July 2011 code and got these errors:
Errors going into course to edit:
Notice: Undefined property: stdClass::$intro in /[mydir]/course/modedit.php on line 146
Notice: Undefined property: stdClass::$introformat in /[mydir]/course/modedit.php on line 147
Skip to main content
Adding Block errors:
Warning: require_once(/[mydir]/mod/attforblock/renderhelpers.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /[mydir]/blocks/attendance/block_attendance.php on line 29
*******
I'm believing this addon is dead for v2.0.5....real shame.
- John
There is a beta version that works ok in Moodle 2.x. Please, take a look into this thread.
Hi Luis,
Thank you very much for that link. I just found it a short time ago. I have posted the 'Notice' results when choosing to 'Take Attendance' in that thread a few minutes ago.
But at least it seems to be working
Now, thanks to your message and link, others following us will be able to find it, too!
- John