student attendance base

[Dennis1234]

I’m setting up a database to track attendance and assignment completion and grades. Will tackle the attendance section first. I have a student table with studentID as key. I have a course table with CourseID. I have a week table with WeekID. We only meet weekly, so that’s all I really need, ie week 1, week 2 etc…

I’m not sure how to display this on a form to select data… Ideally the form would have the student name and attended Yes/No. The attended would be an option button. How do I tie that in to the particular week. So, for Week 1 they were present. Then Week 2 they were not present. I could do a combo list and choose Week 1, then another combo box to choose present or absent (or late or left early for that matter).

I’m getting confused by how to set this up.

D

[frofa]

Hello…

Step 1 - have you come up with a database SCHEMA (DIAGRAM) showing your tables, columns and relationships (via the table primary and foreign keys)? For example, your studentID key would be a FOREIGN KEY in your course table.

Step 2 is to make some QUERIES to give you the information you need from the tables.

Step 3 is to design a FORM/S to enter your data and generate the output you need.

OTHER SUGGESTIONS: You probably will need a WEEKS table with week_id (id_wk), week number (wk_no), week date (wk_date), etc. Also an ATTENDANCE table with its own primary key id_at, id_wk_fk (week number foreign key), id_st_fk (student number foreign key). This junction table will be the ‘heart’ of your database. A question: should you record that the student is present (Positive attendance) or the student is absent (Negative attendance).

[Dennis1234]

Yes, I agree on the diagram, just hard to do in this medium. I guess I can make it more simplified. I don’t really need the course since there is technically only one. I have a Weeks table, and can add Week Date field. I think the default should be positive attendance.
I could make a field called Week1 in the student table and add Week2 and 3 etc… but that is not per normalization.
The real question is how do I show or set up the form.

[frofa]

Maybe take a screenshot of your BASE MENU>TOOLS>RELATIONSHIPS diagram and post. I think you need to work out your database DESIGN/SCHEMA before starting work on the FORM. Not clear what you mean when you say: I could make a field called Week1 in the student table and add Week2 and 3 etc… but I would still recommend having an ATTENDANCE table to record the week ID and the student ID on each of its rows. You would then be able to make a simple query to show all the attendances for a given student OR list all the students attending on a given date/week. You could also, if you really wanted to, incorporate the present or absent flag into the ATTENDANCE table (redundant, since if a student is present they cannot be absent).