two lane road winding through a thick, green forest

Office of the Registrar

Attendance

As a nonmandatory attendance-taking school, the 91次元 requires attendance-taking only for the first three weeks of the semester (or the equivalent for shortened parts of term). Instructors may track attendance beyond the first three weeks, though it is not required.

Student Requirements

Students are required to attend the first two sessions of each class. Students who do not attend the first two class meetings may be required by the instructor to drop the course. Students who know they will be absent should contact their instructors in advance.

This rule allows for early identification of open seats so that other students may add into classes. 

If an instructor requests that an absent student drop their class, the student must drop the class themselves in GrizPortal to avoid receiving a failing grade.

Neither the Registrar's Office nor the instructor may drop a student. Rather, the student must initiate the drop themselves. View instructions for dropping a class.

Instructor Requirements

All instructors are required to log attendance for the first 15 instructional days of the semester (or the equivalent for shortened part-of-term classes). Taking attendance is optional after the 15th instructional day of the semester.

Example methods for tracking attendance include but are not limited to:

Why is attendance required for the first 15 days?

Students must meet attendance requirements to qualify for federal financial aid, such as federal Pell grants and direct loans.

If students do not meet those requirements, the University is required to return a portion or all of the student's financial aid. This generates an outstanding balance on the student's account.

Defining Attendance

Attendance can take the form of any active engagement in a class, online or in person, according to .

Academic engagement is defined as the "active participation by a student in an instructional activity related to the student's course of study," including but not limited to:

  • Attending a class session, lecture, recitation, lab, or other field activity (physically or online) where there is opportunity for interaction between the instructor and students
  • Participating in a Canvas activity, online textbook activity, or another interactive form of online instruction (beyond just viewing pages or logging in)
  • Interacting with an instructor about course concepts/materials via email, phone, office hours, after class, etc.
  • Submitting an assignment or project
  • Taking a quiz, test, survey, etc.
  • Posting in a discussion forum
  • Participating in a study group or group project assigned by the instructor

Academic engagement does not include, for instance:

  • Viewing an online class or module without further participation
  • Logging in to Canvas or another online platform without further participation
  • Having a conversation about dropping a class
  • Completing the student identity verification assignment for online classes
  • Advising appointments, living in student housing, or using a campus meal plan

Last Dates of Attendance

A last date of attendance (LDA) is a student's most recent known instance of academic engagement as defined in the previous section.

Instructors are prompted to supply LDAs at certain points throughout the semester.

Course Drop Requests

Course drop requests in Banner Workflow prompt the instructor to note whether the student did or did not begin attendance in their class when approving the drop request.

Final Grade Entry

LDAs are required when assigning the following grades during final grade entry. Enter an LDA for each student in the MM/DD/YYYY format, or click on the calendar then select a day. 

  • I (Incomplete)
  • F (Fail)
    • If the student never attended, assign and NF (Nonattendance-F) instead of a traditional failing grade. This will allow you to save without entering an LDA.
  • RF (Remedial F)
  • NCR (No credit)
    • There is not currently a credit/no credit grade mark for nonattendance. If the student never attended and has a CR/NCR grade mode, enter the first day of the session as their LDA then email grading@umontana.edu to report nonattendance.
  • NC (WRIT classes only)

Be sure to click save as GrizPortal will timeout after 30 minutes of inactivity.

Review your roster to ensure that all grades are entered correctly and include last dates of attendance where necessary. Omitting an LDA is a common reason for seeing an error message.

Semester Withdrawals

LDAs are required when a student receiving federal financial aid withdraws from the semester.

Requests for LDAs are sent to instructors via email from the UM Solutions Center. To report a date, the instructor must reply to the UM Solutions Center email with the requested information.

The University is required to report this information within 30 days of a student withdrawing, and there are multiple processing steps that take place after the instructor replies with an LDA. For this reason, it is paramount that instructors reply to these requests within 2 to 3 business days of receiving the email.

What happens if we don't receive a last date of attendance?

If we do not receive confirmation that a student engaged in a class, we must adhere to the assumption that the student did not attend.

This can negatively impact a student who had actually attended, especially for Pell grant students. For this reason, it is important that instructors report this information in a timely manner, not only so that the University can meet the deadline for returning those funds, but also so that students who actually did begin attendance are not adversely affected by non-responses.

Note that instructors are only required to record attendance/academic engagement for the first three weeks of the semester. However, requests for LDAs are sent throughout the course of the entire semester.

Your prompt attention and accurate reporting of LDAs helps our University stay in federal compliance and ensures our ability to continue to offer federal financial aid to our students.