We are storing people's class attendance information to Drupal. We would like to show this in a grid/chart, where the first column of each row shows person's name, and rest of the columns (ca. 20) either a checkbox or "X" if the user attended a class, or otherwise an non-checked box or empty column:

(dates here)
Jack X XXX X X
Jill XX XXX XX

It should also be possible to edit the attendance information on the grid. Each attendance information is a node of its own.

This functionality can probably mostly be achieved using views and editablefields, but there is one problem: if a person has not attended a specific class he/she will not have at all an attendace node for that day. What would be the easiest way to create an attendace node in those cases, so that it would be possible for the end user to edit the grid by just clicking on the checkbox or typing an 'X'?