Attendance is critical to an institution appropriately using federal aid funds. Taking attendance allows the institution to make clear determinations of when a student last attended class, which then has implications to the use of federal funds and what federal funds must be returned. When it comes to attendance in an online course it may seem a little unclear how attendance is defined. Luckily, in the Federal Student Aid Handbook we have very specific information to draw from that can help guide our decision-making when designing courses for an online environment.
According to the Federal Student Aid Handbook acceptable indications of attendance in an online course can include:
Per the handbook, "in a distance education context, documenting that a student has logged into an online class is not sufficient, by itself, to demonstrate academic attendance by the student" (Federal Student Aid Handbook, 2016, p. 886). Essentially, a student must be required to do more than just "log in" to be documented as having attended an online course.
Knowing that it is critical for our institution to have clear documentation of a student's last date of attendance, The Office of Technology and Digital Innovation encourages the inclusion of at least one academic-related activity each week as a basic aspect of course quality and compliance. This component is an important step in the course design process and appears in our checklist of effective practices for online teaching. So next time you are designing an online course, consider how you can build in opportunities for attendance to be demonstrated on a weekly basis.
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