Design and Use of a Mobile Application to Prevent Teachers’ Absenteeism in a Higher Education Setting

Abstract

In this paper, we present a digital application developed to prevent teachers’ absenteeism in a private university in Indonesia. In particular, we evaluated the development and the application of an Android-based attendance management system (AAMS) to monitor teachers’ attendance and their teaching activity at a private university in the capital city of Jakarta, Indonesia. Adopting a design-based research approach, we observed the development procedure and interviewed three end-users of the application, i.e. teachers. The findings of the study revealed the potential use of AAMS as a digital tool to prevent absenteeism among university teachers. The three main challenges were highlighted during the application of AAMS, including the processing time duration and system error, the reporting and analytics issues, and the input manipulation. Furthermore, a recommendation is offered on the basis of the findings.

Are Biometric Attendance Registers a Panacea for Workplace Absenteeism in Tanzania? A Lesson from Public Secondary Schools in Nyamagana Municipality

“…Most scholars who studied effectiveness of ICT in managing (employees) teachers' workplace absenteeism used scientific experimentation methods like machine-learning and design-based research (DBR) approach (Suryaman & Mulyono, 2019;Callen et al, 2016). Moreover, despite the available studies on the effectiveness of digital mechanism in managing workplace absenteeism, little is still known regarding the matter, especially in countries disadvantaged technologically and which slowly adopt biometrics as promising means to mitigate the problem like Tanzania.…”

“…The implication here is that if used properly, technology plays a key role as it shapes employees' behaviour and increases productivity including service delivery performance in an organisation. In Indonesia, Android-based attendance management system (AAMS) was devised to monitor teachers' attendance and their teaching activity at a private university in Jakarta (Suryaman & Mulyono, 2019). Connected to a phone's Global Positioning System (GPS), the device's effectiveness was limited to access of application only to a particular position.…”

“…Connected to a phone's Global Positioning System (GPS), the device's effectiveness was limited to access of application only to a particular position. The AAMS feature required teachers to complete these three tasks to be counted as present in the class: check students' attendance in the classroom, describe the topic being taught, and save the data to the system (Suryaman & Mulyono, 2019). However, the AAMS suffered from several challenges: the technology was not time friendly because teachers spent long duration to apply AAMS, and it affected teachers' teaching plans.…”

“…However, the AAMS suffered from several challenges: the technology was not time friendly because teachers spent long duration to apply AAMS, and it affected teachers' teaching plans. More so, poor internet connectivity was another barrier of AAMS (Suryaman & Mulyono, 2019). Unexpected cases of AAMS' system error also caused wrongly penalisations of teachers, and some teachers manipulated their attendance by modifying the GPS data input to enable them make forgery of their attendance.…”

Developing an Android-Based Mobile Application for Civic Education Learning

“…As the world enters Industry 4.0 era, there has been a growing need for developing an innovative android-based application learning media which enables to improve student's attention and motivation in learning. Many Android-based applications have been developed for educational and other purposes [17], [18], [19]. The mobile devices offer an opportunity for creative use and provide great access to interesting content [20].…”