Calculate Attendance for Mixed Location Days
In some situations, school districts have schedules where students switch learning locations over the course of the day. For example, a group of students attends classes in school for the first half of the day and then completes their remaining classes asynchronously. Depending on state reporting requirements, the district may need to report attendance totals for the day for each location. Additionally, the Learning Location icon displayed for students will reflect the mixed day location and, where appropriate, will show the student's learning location for the class period.
This section describes how you can set up calendar days and attendance views to report what will be referred to as mixed day attendance.
If students are scheduled in multiple buildings and your attendance views are set up to calculate MBS attendance, configure mixed days in your calendar only if attendance periods match across the buildings. The student's home building calendar will be used to determine the learning location for periods so it is not possible to accurately calculate totals for the day when the periods are different.
In the following scenario, the period totals in the day totals record would be incorrect for students who have mixed day locations:
The attendance view setup is defined to use MBS.
Attendance periods between those buildings do not match.
You are using Mixed Days in your calendar.
This will also cause inaccuracies in the attendance percentage information if they are configured to display on the student summary page. The Percentages on Student Registers will be unaffected.
Define Mixed Day Locations by Calendar Day
For each calendar day where students have mixed days, use the Mixed Day fields on the Calendar Day page to define the locations by attendance periods. To update multiple calendars at the same time, use Mass Update Days.
To define a mixed day pattern, use the Learning Locations field to select the learning locations that follow the same pattern. Then, for the appropriate learning location types, select the attendance periods for the day.
For example, if students are split by the last name and they swap learning locations halfway through the day, your pattern would be set up like this.
| Learning Locations | Periods In School | Periods Virtual/Sync | Periods Virtual/Async |
|---|---|---|---|
| A-M | 1, 2, 3, 4 | 5, 6, 7, 8 | |
| N-Z | 5, 6, 7, 8 | 1, 2, 3, 4 |
Set Up Attendance Views to Calculate Day Totals for Mixed Days
If you have set up a student's learning location as a mixed day for the calendar day, there are two ways that Day Totals can calculate the student's location type and totals for the day.
Calculate Totals for the Full Day in One Row
In the Attendance View Setup, do not select location types in the view's criteria rows.
When a student meets a criterion where no location type is specified, then the Day Totals calculation will calculate a value of M (for Mixed Day) as the location type for the day.
Calculate Totals for Each Learning Location
In the Attendance View Setup, define the following:
- Select the Students Qualify for Each Criteria Listed option.
- In the criteria rows, specify rules by location type.
In this scenario, the Day Totals calculation will calculate a row for each of the learning locations for which the student meets the rule for the day. Depending on how the criteria are defined, both students who are assigned to the location type for the full day or as part of a mixed day may meet the rule.
| Day Totals Fields | Total |
|---|---|
Total Day Periods Student Scheduled Periods Student Unscheduled Periods Present Periods Absent Periods | Reflects the portion of the day the student was in the location type as defined for the calendar day. For example, if the student's Learning Location is defined to have a Mixed Day where they are In School periods 1, 2, 3, 4, then the student's totals for In School would be based on these four attendance periods. |
| Max Day Time | Reflects all of the possible attendance periods in the day based on the periods for the student's home building. The total is calculated as follows:
If the school has days where students are in a subset of attendance periods, such as A/B days where each day has a unique set of periods, and you need to use a selected list of periods, then criteria rows should be defined by cycle day so you can select the appropriate list of periods for each day. This field is not displayed on the Day Totals page. It is available for purposes of calculating percentages for a total day when day totals are being calculated by learning location for mixed days. |
