Attendance Recording

Sounds like this would be a helpful addition.

A couple of thoughts:

I like the idea of a connection between the gradebook and attendance record. Is it possible that the attendance record itself might also factor in the grade? Should it have an associated taxonomy term in the gradebook vocabulary?

The frequency of classes may not be daily - it might meet twice a week or three times a week, so this should be part of the configuration. Optionally, the teacher might not need to select the date at all. Just add an attendance entry whenever the teacher decides to take attendance (i.e. it needn't be at regular intervals).

Rather than above the gradebook, you might want to pop open a new window that closes when class attendance is submitted.

Are additional permissions necessary, or is 'administer gradebook' not too broad for the person selecting excused/tardy? You could either handle this through drupal role, or gradebook roles...

What is the argument for the attendance records being nodes? I am not sure I see the benefit in that.

It sounds like we agree. I think this will make a nice submodule. If you want to try to code this, I would be happy to help out as needed and evaluate the code when it is ready.

Yes. I figured you would be getting to that question soon. I agree that gradebook needs a hook to allow submodules to insert links on the gradebook page. How about adding something like the following block in theme_gradebook_page()

  $output = '<div id="gradebook-container">';

  // This block allows submodules to add links to a link-bar above the gradebook grade page
  $output .= '<div id="gradebook-grade-page-links">';  
  $addlinks = module_invoke_all('gradebook_grade_page_links', $gradebook);
  $output .= implode(" ", $addlinks);
  $output .= '</div>';

  $output .= theme('gradebook_table', $headers, $rows, array('class' => 'gradeb\
ook'));
  $output .= '</div>';
...

and then in the submodules we can do something like (I am working on roster now, so you'll want to adopt your own version of this function appropriate to attendance)

/**
 * Implementation of hook_gradebook_grade_page_links().
 */
function gradebook_roster_gradebook_grade_page_links($gradebook) {
  $links = array();
  if (gradebookapi_is_teacher($gradebook)) {
    $link = l('roster', 'gradebook/'. $gradebook->tid .'/roster');
    $links[] = $link;
  }
  return $links;
}

What do you think? Would this be sufficient?

I think this name can work. It makes for long function names, but its also clear what they do. This code also makes it easy to customize the format via gradebook.css.

Looks like the wildcard is off....gradebookapi_is_teacher needs the taxonomy term, not the term id....

$items['gradebook/%gradebookapi_gradebook/roster'] = array(
    'title'            => 'Roster',
    'page callback'    => 'drupal_get_form',
    'page arguments'   => array('gradebook_roster_page', 1),
    'access callback'  => 'gradebookapi_is_teacher',
    'access arguments' => array(1),
    'weight'           => 0,
    'type'             => MENU_CALLBACK,
  );

@jdwfly. I've just updated Gradebook and a few things have changed that might affect your development of this submodule. 1. Submodules are now in their own subdirectories for better organization. 2. I've changed hook_gradebookapi_get_students and hook_gradebookapi_get_teachers a little (see CVS messages, Changelog file, etc for more information).

You can continue developing with the pre-April 1, 2009 version, and I can adjust things to work with the new dev. I just wanted to let you know that there has been some changes to the api...

Also note that this affects og_gradebook as well. Next time you get the latest gradebook-6.x.2.x-dev, be sure to also get the latest og_gradebook-6.x.2.x-dev release!

You can follow the example in gradebook.module and gradebook.pages.inc for the gradebook_grade_form (which is a themed table). The key steps to theming the form are to specify the theme function in the $form array like $form = array('#theme' => 'gradebook_grade_form');,

and then theme the form in a function like function theme_gradebook_grade_form(&$form), using drupal_render to render the form elements. These can be placed in the rows of a table, which can also be themed. Have a look at theme_gradebook_grade_form to see how this is done.

Finally, remember to use hook_theme (as is done in gradebook.module) to tell the theme layer about your new theme function.

That should do it.

subscribing
very interested in this module, any news?

Thanks jdwfly. I am also still interested - just been working on other things lately. I'll be happy to have a look and work it into the 6.x-2.x-dev release when its ready.

Thanks, I am reviewing this now. Do you have a gradebook_attendance.install file to create the new database table? If you do, please attache it. Otherwise, I am sure I could figure it out from the module file.

Reading through the code, I think this is a good start. I think it would also be helpful to provide an attendance summary page, with an option for including attendance in the gradebook (i.e. either as an attendance category so it can be counted as an assignment and tallied into the course grade). The summary page should be accessible from the gradebook link, available for the teacher as well as the student.

The gradebook attendance module is now part of the 6.x-2.x-dev package. I started with jdwfly's code and then further developed it. One significant addition is the option to create attendance assignments - automatically assigning points to a gradebook category for student attendance. Here are some details that are now part of the README.txt file.

4.  Gradebook Attendance provides a means for recording student attendance and
    provides an attendance page that is similar to the gradebook page. When this
    module is enabled, students and teachers will have an Attendance tab when
    viewing the gradebook page. Clicking on this tab will take them to the
    attendance page. Student's will only see their own attendance records.
    Teachers will see the records for the entire class and will be able to edit
    or create new attendance records. Also, if attendance has not already
    been recorded "Take Today's Attendance" reminder link will appear above the
    gradebook page that will take the teacher to a form where they can record
    attendance.
    A. The teacher can choose to give a student one of three marks: Present,
       Absent, or Tardy.
    B. Attendance records are limited to one per gradebook per calendar day.
    C. Attendance records for the entire class can be edited or deleted by
       following the "edit" or "delete" links on the gradebook attendance page.
    D. An individual student's attendance record can be changed for a given day
       by clicking on the attendance record for that day.
    E. An individual student's entire attendance record can be edited by
       clicking on the student's name on the attendance page.
    F. The attendance page can be exported to ascii text or Excel spreadsheet
       through the Export tab on the gradebook page.
    G. Teacher's can create an attendance assignment that will provide points
       for student's attendance when attendance is taken over a range of dates.
       This is done by checking the "attendance assignment" box on the form when
       creating an assignment. If this box is checked, then the points specified
       in the "Points if Present, Absent and Tardy" fields will be given
       whenever attendance is taken between the publish and due dates for the
       attendance assignment. Grading is automatic. The grades are also updated
       if the assignment is modified. A special (themeable) notice is also shown
       on the assignment node explaining how attendance is graded.
    H. Attendance records are emphasized on the attendance page using a css
       style. The default emphasis can be adjusted by overriding or editing the
       gradebook_attendance.css file.

I think that everything, except views integration, from jdwfly's initial feature list is present. I'll leave this issue open as a reminder to follow up with views integration.

Awesome. I am wondering a bit if you can go into detail about the daily attendance assignment part? I

I am trying to give my students a daily blog writing assignment. Is this how the attendance assignment functions?

Also, can you create different than teacher permission levels to allow class monitors to take attendance, but not let them alter grades?

The attendance assignment was designed with the idea of taking class attendance, but I suppose it could also be used for your daily blog writing assignment. There are only three levels of grades provided - present, absent and tardy. If that is sufficient then each day that a blog writing assignment is do, you can "record attendance" and give each student a grade. You specify how many points for each grade category, and the gradebook possible points and earned are automatically updated for each student.

I think I could generalize this module to better provide for use cases similar to this. Perhaps changing "attendance" to "repeating" would make sense. Then attendance would be one way to specialize it.

I also like your idea to grant some gradebook roster roles the ability to take attendance.

hmm.. Maybe attendance and repeating should be kept different submodules. If possible create a task/assignment category, which gives set number of points for automatic task completion, and you could set the number of allowed tasks per day and maximum allowed task responses. if possible a drop down box of allowed points in the range of the daily automatically given points.....

That way you can say a daily blog would automatically be scored a 10, however during random spot checks and assigned peer monitor checks , they could use a drop down box with points 1,2,3,4,5,6.7.8.9.10 to edit the automatically scored blog. The drop down box would save steps required to edit a commonly reoccurring process.

If you need an attendance recording system I recommend using http://www.ghg.com I use them for my company for my employees and when we have festivals to keep track of people, supplies, etc.

Im going to try the gradebook attendance module... I really need it integrated and it is now.. I just havent had a chance to test this yet. I need to it is on my l ist of things to do.

Great module - thanks