December 17, 2025

Student Attendance Verification

In support of institutional and federal requirements, faculty must verify student attendance in all courses for the current term using the Teaching Dashboard application in Workday. This process helps ensure the accuracy of enrollment records for all students and supports compliance with federal regulations, including those related to financial aid. This verification process is essential to maintaining accurate academic records and supporting student success.

Your prompt attention to this matter is essential for compliance with federal regulations and the timely processing of financial aid. Failure to verify attendance for your students may result in loss of federal financial aid for the student and could create outstanding account balances. 

If you have questions or need assistance, please contact Jessica Ott, Deputy Director of Financial Aid & Scholarships, via email at jott@lsu.edu. 

Spring 2026 Deadlines

Please confirm whether each student on your course roster has attended or participated in your class by the applicable census date, listed below.

Acceptable Forms of Reporting Attendance 

Please choose one of the following two options to verify student attendance in Workday by the deadline listed above.

• Option 1: Academic Engagement Activity (AEA) Automation
   This option utilizes a Moodle activity to automate reporting to Workday, which is ideal for instructors who teach large-enrollment courses. The instructor will need to create an activity in Moodle that is due by the census date/deadline listed above, and is tagged as an Academic Engagement Activity. The AEA must either record a grade within 48 hours of the census date, mark activity completion by 11:59 PM on the census date, or do both. See GROK article 20694 for instructions. If you are teaching an LSU Online course, please use this option. If you are teaching a cross-enrolled course, please refer to your Cross-Enrollment Reminder email for detailed guidance.  
• Option 2: Manual Entry into Workday
   For those opting not to use the AEA method, you can use a variety of methods to track student participation by census date and manually record each student’s participation in Workday. Please note that, with this option, Workday will default to marking all students as attending. Therefore, an instructor will only need to change the attendance marking for students on their roster who have not attended their class. 

Instructions

• Recording Student Attendance in Workday (PDF)
• Recording Student Attendance in Workday (Video)

Records

All records related to student attendance or participation must be retained for a period of three (3) years for auditing purposes.