I'm not sure there are any administrative tasks that I hate more than taking attendance. I'm of the mind that students are adults, and if they skip my class, they'll miss out on learning which will ultimately be reflected via the assignments and assessments built in to the course. Unfortunately, since things like financial aid, grants, scholarships, and university-level initiatives require a count of all students enrolled in classes and attending classes, taking attendance is something I grudgingly do.

Taking attendance, however, is a huge time-suck. I've tried taking attendance on my own attendance sheets, passing around sign-in sheets during class, and even having students sign-in as they enter the classroom. Unfortunately, each of these methods required me to have a sign-in sheet ready for every class each day and to enter the missing students in some sort of record book (real or electronic) at the end of the day, wasting valuable time that could have been devoted to more productive interests.

This semester, I've been using an automated solution on my Android phone called Attendance Tracker. Check out the video below for a quick walk-through of the features.

At the beginning of each semester, I upload a course roster for each of my classes that lists the names of all enrolled students to my Google Drive account as a spreadsheet. Then, I open up Attendance Tracker, create a new event for each of my classes, and then import the list of students from the Google Drive Spreadsheet. During each class period, I open up the app and check off the students who are not present. That's it!

At any point in the semester, I can look at a complete record of who was present for each of my classes, and I can even export the data and sent it via email.

I paid to unlock all restrictions and remove ads (about $6.00), and it's been worth every penny. If you just want to check it out, you can use a version that restricts the number of events (i.e., classes) you can have at any given time and is ad-supported for free.