The JISC LA platform will be updated on 12/03/25 with an improvement which will slightly change how ‘unexpected students’ are presented on the system.

What are ‘unexpected’ students?

Students are able to check in for any session where the code has been shared with them. They can do this from 10 minutes before the start of the session until the end of the session. This is useful when a student may be catching up some sessions that they have missed with another seminar group. Currently when a student checks in for a session that they have not been scheduled to attend (or have not been added to the register by a member of staff), they are flagged on the register as ‘unexpected’.

What is changing?

Currently, when an ‘unexpected’ students check in, their status on the register is shown as ‘unexpected’. If a member of staff updates their attendance status on the register to ‘Not attended’ or ‘Not required’, although the change in status is recorded on the system, the student will remain displayed as ‘Unexpected’ on the register. To improve how ‘unexpected’ students are presented, from 12th March the register will display as follows:

• Number of students ‘on the register’ – These are the students that have been scheduled to attend via the timetable or added by a member of staff
• Number of students ‘not on the register’ – These are the students who have checked in whilst not being scheduled in the timetable to attend or added to the register by a member of staff.
• Students who are ‘unexpected’ are displayed in the register list with an asterisk after their name.

When a student attends as a session as ‘unexpected’, what gets recorded?

Whilst all ‘unexpected’ attendance are recorded on JISC LA, there are a couple of scenarios which determine how the data is handled for engagement monitoring.

1. If a student attends a session which is linked to a unit they are enrolled to then their attendance is recorded against the unit and is processed under the Academic Engagement Framework via the Engage app. An example is where a student might have missed a seminar session delivered to their seminar group but attends an equivalent session that has been scheduled for another seminar group on their programme.
2. If a student attends a session which is linked to a unit that they are not enrolled in then their attendance is recorded on JISC LA but this is not monitored under the Academic Engagement Framework.

Further information

• Academic Engagement Framework
• Guidance for using the JISC LA platform
• Guidance for students – Academic Engagement and Attendance