For face-to-face courses, attendance is one of the most critical factors in student academic success. Once physically present, students must also be actively engaged in the learning process, but encouraging or requiring attendance is a valuable first step in promoting student achievement. 

The Blackboard Attendance feature supports this by offering a straightforward mechanism for you to record and track student attendance. The tool allows you to mark whether a student is present, late, absent, or excused for each class meeting, and to provide students with that record so they can monitor their own progress. 

In addition, you can use attendance as part of grade calculations, just as you would any other grade column. 

Student photos will appear in the Attendance tool if the student has set up their Blackboard Profile.