This is an issue that often arises: the attendance-related features of JumpRope can only be as good as the data that is being entered. While the system is "robust" in the way that it handles missing attendance data (it doesn't "break" anything or incorrectly affect student averages), real-time attendance is only useful when teachers submit data regularly throughout the day and the week. This forum will serve as a place to capture, share, and discuss various strategies to improve attendance submission for schools using JumpRope. Please feel free to participate by adding your comments at the bottom - we will periodically add ideas to this main post, and it will help out school staff across dozens of schools!
Here are a few from my personal experience (and some of our existing schools) to get us started:
- Use the Attendance Submission Report in the Backoffice to view attendance submission regularly. Then, use this information to personally contact each teacher on a regular basis until their submission improves. The built-in Email tool may make this easier and save you some time!
- Pick the right time to address the issue. Depending on your school environment, this may mean making a huge push right from the start of the year to build productive habits. It also may mean allowing the teachers a few weeks to figure out the system before enforcing the specific elements such as attendance. I do recommend, however, making the push relatively early so that teachers can begin to see the fruits of their labor (once they realize the value of accurate attendance information, they will be more likely to contribute to the effort to gather it).
- Make attendance buddies. Pair up teachers thoughtfully (usually it makes sense if they share students) and have them remind each other to take attendance (it's easy for the 5th period teacher to notice if someone forgot to take attendance during second period).
- Utilize peer pressure. Similar to the above, it may be useful to encourage teachers to encourage each other to take attendance rather than to have direct pressure from the administration. Again, this depends heavily on the school culture and environment.
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