Jisc attendance data benefits for coalface academics

Conference: FLIE Conference 2025

Abstract:

Many students who attend lectures and seminars (plus many who do not) enter the code and create a record of their attendance. Attendance data is really useful for unit staff. It enables us to understand what is happening on a unit, where we need to support students, changes in attendance, how timetabling influences attendance etc. As access to the data in a format that enables these analyses is restricted, the poster explores how staff at the teaching coalface can gain benefit from this rich dataset.

This technique requires familiarity with Excel, especially the vlookup function which allows you to join datasets together. The process extracts a classlist from Brightspace and then scrapes the Jisc attendance data screen, pastes the information into an Excel sheet and then joins the information together so that you have the attendance percentage for a student at a point in time. You might extract the Jisc data every week or two to keep track of changes.

Source: Manual