App Sheet for Course Attendance Monitoring in Higher Learning Institutions: A Citizen Developer Approach

Abstract

Low-code and no-code development platforms have been around for a long time, but they have only recently become popular. Platforms like Appian and Mendix make users with no coding experience to build complex applications. Citizen developers have been on the rise since the inception of low-code/ no-code app development. However, this phenomenon has not yet benefited learning institutions in Tanzania. Many of the tasks performed by instructors are repetitive and time-consuming, such tasks include recording and tracking student attendance. A traditional approach to record student attendance is performed by asking every student to sign on an attendance list that passes through all students during the beginning of lectures. This approach is inefficient in term of time and reliability especially in a large class, where a student can sign on the attendance list for other students who are not present in the class. Several automated attendance systems have been proposed based on biometric recognition, barcode, and other technologies such as mobile device. However, all of the previous developed systems require programming skills which sometimes become difficult for Citizen developer to come up with such system. AppSheet as a no-code development platform provides features that empowers non-developers to customize their applications to suit their specific organizational needs. It enables users to create intelligent actions and interfaces autonomously. Thus, this paper explore the potential of App Sheet by proposing the Attendance Monitoring Application (CAMA) to automate student attendance processes for learning institutions in Tanzania. The results have shown that the CAMA can be used as a solution to assist course managers in registraton and monitoring of students perticipation in the course.