Moving to an Attendance Control System. Does It Matter?

Abstract

The scientific community not always agree when discussing the benefits or problems with using student attendance systems. Some refer that these systems are expensive, flawed and demotivate students [1], while others argue that one of the main factors for academic failure is not being in class [2]. Regardless of this discussion, there is the need for leadership to optimize higher education resources, such as staff, classrooms, laboratories and teachers. With the democratization of higher education and the opening of new opportunities, more students are pursuing education at a high level, leading to increasing number of students, with diverse academic backgrounds, economic status and culture. Universities have to adapt, within budget constraints and in the assumption of the commitment to their social and economic development mission.In this context, it is necessary to separate "mandatory attendance", in which a student is required, by regulations, to attend to a specific percentage of classes, from "attendance control", which allows to get valuable information for management and allocation of resources. The choice of enforcing a minimum number of presences in class depends on the policy of the scientific and pedagogical bodies. However, the information about student attendance represents valuable management information that can be used for informed decision making regarding the university operation.Regardless of this discussion, some universities, such as the Taraz State University, are currently performing manual registration of attendance. In each class, the teachers register the students' attendance, and, after class, they transcribe this information to a digital platform, to be consulted by the faculties' management body. This is a repetitive, boring and error prone process, taking valuable time from teachers and harming other scientific or pedagogical activities.In this paper, we describe the design, development and implementation of a digital attendance control management system, adequately integrated with other university's services, such as class timetables, b-learning platform, registration record office, and others. The system is based on open source programming languages, protocols and tools, and composed of hardware devices to be installed in the classroom and servers to receive and save the information in a database. Each student can use both an RFID card and smartphone to register attendance, that will be immediately accessible to the management bodies. Teachers can validate the students' attendance in each class, ensuring that the information is correct and up to date.