The Challenge
The English Language Institute (ELI) at CUNY College of Staten Island runs a non-matriculated ESL program serving approximately 200-300 students per year. Many of these students hold F-1 visas, which means the program is required to track and report attendance to comply with SEVP regulations. Students who fall below the 80% attendance threshold must be reported through SEVIS, potentially affecting their visa status.
Before My Class Roll, the program relied on a combination of paper sign-in sheets and spreadsheets to track attendance. This process created several pain points:
- Hours spent on manual calculations. At the end of each term, the director had to manually aggregate attendance data from multiple teachers' spreadsheets and calculate percentages for every student in every class.
- No audit trail. Spreadsheets could be edited by anyone with access, and there was no way to verify when a record was created or whether it had been changed after the fact.
- Buddy sign-ins. Paper sign-in sheets made it easy for students to sign in for absent classmates, undermining the integrity of attendance data.
- Compliance anxiety. Without a verifiable system, the director could not be confident that the attendance data reported to SEVIS was fully accurate and defensible in an audit.
The Solution
My Class Roll was implemented to address each of these challenges directly:
QR Code Self-Check-In
Teachers display a QR code at the start of each session. Students scan with their phones and check in — no app download, no account required. Check-in takes under 10 seconds per student, freeing class time for instruction. Each check-in creates an immutable timestamp that cannot be altered.
Automated Compliance Reports
The director can pull up per-student attendance percentages, per-class summaries, and institution-wide reports at any time. Students approaching the 80% SEVIS threshold are flagged automatically, giving the team time to intervene before a violation must be reported. Reports export to CSV and XLSX for submission to accreditation bodies.
Immutable Event-Sourced Records
Every attendance action — student check-in, teacher mark, status change — is recorded as an immutable event with a timestamp. Records cannot be deleted or backdated. If a teacher changes a status, both the original and the correction are preserved in the audit log. This gives the director confidence that attendance data is defensible under audit.
30-Second Attendance for Teachers
Teachers take attendance on a simple, auto-saving interface. Click a student's status to cycle through Present, Late, Excused, or Absent — no save button needed. The interface is mobile-friendly, so teachers can use a tablet or phone in the classroom. The learning curve is essentially zero.
Results
Results after one semester of use
[Quote from program director — to be added after first semester of use]
See how My Class Roll can work for your program
Whether you run an ESL program, a community college department, or a language school, My Class Roll makes attendance tracking effortless and audit-ready.
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