ATTENDANCE

The attendance project arose from the need to replace a slow and clunky piece of software with something that was easier to use and tailored to the College's needs. I started the process for this project in the summer of 2008 and it took me a year to design, build and test this web application. The resulting software has been extremely successful and is used daily by hundreds of users.

The attendance web application consists of a register "grid" page, pages to edit a specific student's record and many, many reports pages. Students are able to see their own attendance record via the Intranet, whilst their parents are able to view it via the Parent Portal.

Attendance Screen
Attendance Screen
Attendance Screen
  • Automatically loads the register for the current or last lesson taught This means that teachers can get to their register quickly and easily, just one click from the Staff Intranet home page.
  • Mark information for selected marks Certain marks, such as trips, exams and notified absences can carry extra information. For instance, if the mark is a trip mark, the name of trip, the times and the name of the person leading the trip are displayed. If the student has given the college advanced notice of an absence, the reason for that absence can be displayed here.
  • Late minutes The number of minutes that a student is late (along with a reason) is recorded in a simple, non-obtrusive way.
  • Student reporting Staff can quickly access reports on any student in their class.
  • Grid navigation The "grid" is quickly and easily navigated using the keyboard. The arrow keys moves the user around the grid and the user is automatically moved on to the next student after each mark is entered.
  • Timetables and earlier marks As the user moves around the register grid, the student information box changes to show details for the selected student. This displays the Student's timetable for the day along with any marks that they have received in the earlier lessons.
  • Mark history A complete history of a mark is kept and displayed to all users. This allows anyone to see who entered a mark and when.
  • E-mail whole class Teachers are able to e-mail all of the students in their class from the register page.
  • Quick access to incomplete registers Staff can easily see how many registers they still need to complete. They can then quickly access them, all from one page
  • One button register marking Entering a mark in the "input all" box completes an entire register in one go. This ignores any marks that have already been entered, so if for example, there is only one student missing, the teacher can enter that absence mark and then use the "input all" box to fill in the other present marks.