Attendance

This guide covers how to use Top Hat Attendance and Secure Attendance to track student presence during in-person and hybrid classes. Learn how to start an attendance session, enable location-based Secure Attendance, configure Hybrid Attendance settings, and manage attendance records in the Gradebook.

Whether you’re teaching fully in-person or blending in remote learners, this article walks you through everything from setup to reporting.

Table of Contents

1. Taking Attendance
2. Secure Attendance
3. Attendance for "Hybrid Classes"
4. Student Attendance Submission Process
5. Attendance Comments and Reports

For information about your Top Hat Gradebook, please visit: Educator: The Gradebook

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Taking Attendance

Attendance can be taken at any time. There are two primary ways to initiate an attendance session in Top Hat:

1) "Add to course" an Attendance Session

To initiate a standalone attendance session, select the blue Add to course button at the top of the content tree in your course, then select Attendance.

Image: Top Hat with Attendance option highlighted.

2) Before or During Your Slide Presentation

To take attendance before or during a presentation, first select the slide deck you wish to use and press Present. The presentation launch page will appear and provide the following options:

• Start Presentation
• Take Attendance
• Cancel Presentation

Select Take Attendance to project the 4-digit attendance code on the screen in the physical classroom.

Image: Presentation window with Attendance option highlighted.

If you want to leave the attendance session open throughout the lecture, select Minimize and keep it open in the lower right-hand corner of the window. Proceed with your lecture as normal.

Image: Attendance Code Modal with 4-digit code.

This will allow students to continue submitting the attendance code until you select Finish.

Note: Attendance sessions automatically close after 4 hours if you do not close or finish the session manually.

Image: Slide shown with 4-digit attendance code minimized.

You can also launch attendance during a presentation by selecting the up arrow in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen to open the slide drawer, and then selecting the yellow Attendance button.

Image: Take attendance button highlighted in presenter mode.

Each new attendance session is recorded individually in the gradebook, where it can be easily reviewed, managed, or exported to an Excel spreadsheet.

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Secure Attendance

What is Secure Attendance?

Secure Attendance adds an extra layer of certainty to student submissions. The process of taking attendance remains the same, but in addition to submitting the 4-digit code, students must be physically present in the classroom (within a 500-meter radius).

Presence is determined by device geolocation, or by a combination of geolocation and Bluetooth proximity (to the classroom and other students).

Note: If a student is marked as absent by Secure Attendance, they can still submit responses to in-class questions. Their absence will not affect their course average for question grades, as grades and attendance are tracked independently.

How Does it Work?

Geolocation works on web browsers, iOS apps, and Android apps by sending coordinates to our servers. We use these coordinates to confirm the location of the device submitting the code, affirming the student's physical presence.

Image: Attendance modal with Secure Attendance enabled.

Enabling Secure Attendance (Course Settings)

From your course, click the three horizontal lines icon in the upper banner to open the menu, then select Course Settings.

Image: Course setting icon highlighted.

Select the Attendance tab from the upper menu. Ensure the box next to Use Secure location-based attendance for in-person classes is checked, and then select the blue Save button.

Image: Secure Attendance enabled in course settings.

Student Diagnostic Test

When you enable Secure Attendance, every student in the course will be presented with an onboarding modal and an option to run a diagnostic test. This ensures they have set up the appropriate location permissions on their device or browser. Please refer students to: Student: Secure Attendance.

Taking Secure Attendance

Once enabled in your settings, launching an attendance session will automatically launch Secure Attendance. Ensure you leave the session open for at least two to three minutes to allow time for student locations to be established.

You will know it is active if the modal states "Secure Attendance Enabled." You can monitor the percentage of students whose proximity and geolocation have been verified by the system. When you are ready, select Finish.

If a student enters the correct 4-digit code but fails the location/proximity check, they will be marked as absent. When you finish the session, an alert will notify you of how many students failed the security checks.

Image: Reviewing students who failed secure attendance.

To reconcile this, click the blue show list of students who failed security checks link. If the student is physically present with you, you can manually change their status by selecting the Attended button next to their name. You can also adjust these statuses later in the Gradebook.

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Attendance for "Hybrid Classes"

Instructors can configure their course to require students to indicate whether they are attending the class in-person or remotely when they submit the attendance code. This provides insight into hybrid class breakdowns.

To enable this, go to Course Settings > Attendance tab. Check the box next to Configure attendance for hybrid classes and press Save.

Image: Hybrid classes option selected in course settings.

When hybrid attendance is enabled, students will see an additional question asking if they are attending in-person. The "Yes" response is pre-filled; students only need to change it to "No" if they are attending remotely.

Image: Student view of Hybrid Attendance (Mobile app and web browser).

In your gradebook's attendance report, this will be displayed as "In-Person" or "Remote" depending on the student's selection.

Image: Gradebook displaying "Remote" or "In-Person" statuses.

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Student Attendance Submission Process

For detailed information on the attendance submission process from the student perspective, please refer to the following support article: Student: Attendance.

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Attendance Comments and Reports

To add an attendance comment or manually adjust a status in the Gradebook, click the cell of the student's score and select the pencil icon.

In the modal that appears, you can change the record to:

• Attended: Scored as 1 point.
• Absent: Scored as 0 points.
• Excused: Drops that point from the student's overall attendance record entirely.

You can also add a comment explaining the change by typing it into the provided field in the modal.

Understanding Secure Attendance Comments

Success Messages:

• Student’s geolocation was verified: Student was using a computer/laptop and was geolocated successfully.
• Student’s geolocation was verified. Student’s proximity to other students verified: Student was using the mobile app and was successfully located via both geolocation and Bluetooth proximity.

Error Messages:

Error Message	Resolution for Students
Attendance code was not entered Secure attendance code was not entered.	Ensure you enter the 4-digit code and hit ‘Submit.’ Do not navigate away until you see the success message “You have been marked present.”
Secure attendance could not be verified The student did not have Bluetooth or location enabled.	Check your device permissions and ensure you have both Bluetooth and Location Services enabled.
Student denied geolocation permissions Student denied the prompt requesting access to their location.	Access to location services was denied. Check your device settings and manually allow Top Hat to access your location.
Marked as absent by security checks: XXX meters from expected location The student passed the location check but was deemed outside the accepted radius.	Ensure the device is in range (in the classroom). If you are in the room, try clearing your browser Cache and Cookies, or restarting the app.

Attendance Reports

You can also add a comment to a student's record directly within an Attendance Report. To access a specific session's report, hover over the column header for that day in the Gradebook and select it.

In the Attendance Report, you can view the details of each student's entry for the session, including their record (Attended, Absent, or Excused), system comments, and response time. Summary information for the session is displayed at the top.

The report can be sorted by student name, record, and response time. You can edit records and add comments directly within this view.

To change the title of an attendance session (which defaults to the date and time it was taken), select the Edit button next to the title, enter the new name, and click Save. This new title will reflect in the Gradebook column header.

You can also export attendance comments and data as a .csv file by selecting Export Comments at the top of the report.