Qwickly Attendance Instructor Experience Update

Qwickly Attendance - Updated Instructor Experience 

On Wednesday June 29th, 2022, we will begin rolling out an updated instructor experience for all Qwickly Attendance users. 

Why did we update the instructor experience? 

We take client feedback into consideration with everything we do. Since the launch of Qwickly Attendance, we’ve collected feedback from clients via support tickets, demos, trainings, pilots, and more to identify common pain points. This updated instructor experience addresses a number of those pain points - both big and small. We also made a significant number of changes to improve accessibility. Everything we have done has been with the goal of making Qwickly Attendance easier for instructors to use. 

What's different?

Updated Take Attendance List Mode and new left-hand navigation pane

Updated Records Screen

Updated Settings with Tabs

Advanced Grading Features

Advanced Student Activity Mode

Instructor Course Report for Plus and Pro Licenses

What is new? 

Here is an overview of some key changes instructors will see: 

New Main Navigation 

We replaced the main navigation menu formerly at the top of the screen with a new left hand navigation menu. There are a few benefits to this new menu: 

• It uses space more efficiently 
• It is keyboard accessible 
• It helps clearly indicate that the instructor has launched Qwickly Attendance and is no longer looking at their LMS 
• It gives us room to grow as we add utilities for instructors 

Updated Attendance Modes 

• We made user experience (UX) & user interaction (UI) improvements to each mode of taking attendance, to better utilize screen space and increase accessibility. 
• We added the ability to “clear” a selected attendance status for individual students or all students at once 
• We removed “Accessibility” as an attendance taking mode, since we now have multiple modes that are accessible. 
• We renamed User Activity Mode to Student Activity Mode. This name is more specific and makes it clearer to users that the mode detects student activity. 
• We added the ability to search for a specific student in List and Student Activity modes. 

New “Student Details” Card 

We created a new “Student Details” card that instructors can access by clicking on a student’s name in List, One by One, or Student Activity modes. This card will include high level student information such as the student’s name, username, photo, and their attendance status totals to date. We did this to give instructors easier access to student information while they are taking attendance, instead of navigating to the Records page.

UI Updates to Attendance Record 

• We made various UI updates to the attendance record screen to make better use of screen space and improve accessibility. 
• We froze the top row of the record, so instructors can still see the column headers when they’re scrolling through a long roster 
• We made the record order sticky, meaning instructors will no longer have to choose if they want their oldest or newest records shown first in their instructor settings. 

New Settings Menu 

Instructor Settings was formerly one long page including all available settings. We updated the instructor settings experience to include a settings menu that makes it easier for instructors to navigate and find specific settings they may be looking for. 

Revamped Grading Settings 

For those institutions who enable instructor grading, instructors will see a revamped grading tab within their Settings. The way grading works has not changed - just the process of configuring it. Grading started off simple but over the years, has unintentionally grown more complicated as we added features and options. We revamped the entire section to make it easier for instructors to understand their options and customize exactly how they would like grading to work for their course. 

Added Course Report (Plus and Pro Only) 

Instructors will now have access to the course totals report for their course, which formerly was only accessible to Attendance Pro administrators. We did this to add value for instructors by providing them attendance insights for their course. 

When is it happening? 

These changes will begin rolling out to all Attendance users on Wednesday, June 29th, 2022. We intentionally release updates such as this during summer, in an effort to minimize changes during the typical school year. Our hope is that a summer release will be minimally disruptive for instructors and give faculty a chance to explore the new changes before the fall semester begins.