Electronic Student Attendance Recording System

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mobile phone that used to fill the list of attendance and absence for students in a ... Wireless and radio technologies have been at the heart of many disruptive ...
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International Journal of Computers & Technology Volume 4 No. 2, March-April, 2013, ISSN 2277-3061

Electronic Student Attendance Recording System Dr. AkramAbedelKarim Ahmad AbdelQader1 , Dr. Mohammed Abbas Fadhil Al-Husainy2 Department of Multimedia Systems, Faculty of Sciences and Information Technology, Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan. Amman-Jordan 1

E-mails: [email protected], [email protected]

2

E-mails: [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract—Bluetooth technology is offering a very robust way to transfer data in faster rates within a short range wireless communication local network. Wireless and radio communication technologies are giving organizations and users many benefits such as portability and flexibility, increased productivity, and lower the installation costs. Register the attendance and absence for students in the classroom of all educational institutions is one of the most intensive daily operations. In this paper, we are interesting to use the free wireless communication via Bluetooth technology that is available in most mobile phones and computer systems to build a computerized wireless clients-server network system. The client side will be a mobile phone that used to fill the list of attendance and absence for students in a classroom of educational institutions in an easy and fast way. Server side will contain the centralized database and monitoring attendance system for the distributing clients connected to the system. The idea of this system is developed and implemented on real educational institution. The recorded results show that the system saves a costs and efforts and helps the educational institution to get a more effective system than the old one. Keywords- Distributed Authorization.

Database,

Authentication,

1 INTRODUCTION Most of the educational institution, still record the list of attendance and absence for students at the lectures time on papers, and in some institution rewrite this list later in an electronic list or database. The main problems that are standing behind the difficulty of making this operation fully electronically are: there is no computer in all classrooms of the institution; and if it is exist it is not connecting to the central database through network; some lecturers are favor to use the paper system instead of using the computer. But in the last years, mobile phones become the friendliest attached device with all persons for many reasons: cheap, small, necessary to make a call at any time, use a wireless communication, have many office and other applications, have a camera, have a radio, and have a free wireless communication using Bluetooth technology. And most of the modern phones have a capability to do many and many operations that assist persons to do their jobs in easy, fast, and efficient form. Therefore, it‟s rarely find person has no mobile phone device but there are some persons until now have no computer device.

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An attendance-monitoring system of students in classroom serves as a time log that is set up as a computerized database. An attendance-monitoring system maintains a daily record of a student's present in classroom of courses in universities/school. Attendance is an official document in the classroom. It is actually a legal document, and therefore, it must be taken seriously. Although the school itself monitors students' overall attendance record, in the high school setting, each classroom teacher must record and keep track of the attendance for all students in the course. Implementing a system is necessary to manage classroom attendance [1]. The attendance-monitoring system database is an application that contains electronic files about a history of student‟s attendance. Faculty and administrators in higher education have differing views regarding class attendance policies for students. Informal surveys reveal that there are educators who insist on enforcing compulsory attendance policies while others believe class attendance should be noncompulsory. In either case, administrators and faculty want students to attend class. If they do not attend class but are, nonetheless, able to pass courses and obtain degrees, an institution's reputation will suffer. If students do not attend class and failure is prevalent, the future of the institution is again in jeopardy. In both cases, an institution will not attract students, will experience reduced enrollment, and will eventually cease to exist. It is unlikely either of these extreme scenarios is a serious administrative concern. We can ask the question: is the compulsory attendance policies are justified. Is there a positive relationship between the frequency of class attendance and level of academic achievement? If so, it might be reasonable to suggest that a compulsory attendance policy would foster higher attendance rates and a higher level of academic achievement [2]. Regular class attendance is expected of all students. Instructors will keep an accurate class attendance record, and these records will become part of the student‟s official record. Absences are a serious deterrent to good scholarship; it is impossible to receive instruction, obtain knowledge, or gain skills when absent from class [3, 4]. Jamil, T. suggested An application software installed in the teacher‟s mobile telephone enables it to query students' mobile telephone via Bluetooth connection and, through transfer of students' mobile telephones' Media

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International Journal of Computers & Technology Volume 4 No. 2, March-April, 2013, ISSN 2277-3061

Access Control (MAC) addresses to the teacher‟s mobile telephone, presence of the student can be confirmed [5].

second time window), allowing for multiple devices to connect to each other.

One of the goals of this paper is to examine the feasibility and effectiveness of using ad hoc wireless Bluetooth networking to fill the attendance list of students in classroom and send it to centralized database.

Now a day‟s mobile applications have become more popular and a demand for database data in mobile settings has increased. The most promising form of such environments is the Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET). In MANET a mobile host can act as a source of information, destination, or a router that transfers data towards its destination. Mobile hosts are generally small computing devices with relatively limited resources that can join or leave the network unexpectedly at any time. In addition more sophisticated mobile database management systems are being developed to offer capabilities that parallel those of enterprise level database systems.

The world today is advancing at a very high rate, and within this change is the world of wireless technology. Wireless and radio technologies have been at the heart of many disruptive businesses and activities. The people of today want hassle free and compact products, which can be used at any time or at any place. Wireless is the possible solution to meeting the needs or wants of the society. With Bluetooth technology, this technology can communicate without wires over a single air interface, using radio waves to transmit and receive data. Bluetooth wireless technology is specifically designed for shortrange communications; one result of this very low power consumption, making the technology well suited for use with small, portable personal devices that typically are powered by batteries. Bluetooth wireless technology eliminates the need for numerous wired connections to other devices. This wireless network doesn‟t require line of sight so that it can be operated from any angle of communication. Connections are instant and are maintained even if the devices do not have a clear line of sight. The range of each Bluetooth enabled device is around 10 meters but optionally reaches distances of up to 100 meters with an amplifier [6]. Bluetooth has emerged as a very popular ad hoc network standard today. The Bluetooth standard [7], originally developed for short-range ad-hoc wireless interconnection, is becoming quite appealing in the industrial environment, where a number of applications, such as remote control, diagnostics, process supervision, etc. can benefit from replacing traditional wired connections with wireless ones [8, 9, 10]. Bluetooth makes it extremely easy to configure wireless systems and stations, allowing the fast creation of communication infrastructures in industrial plants without the need for expensive cabling. Bluetooth communication occurs between a master device and a slave device. Bluetooth devices are symmetric such that the same device may operate as a master and also the slave. The Bluetooth has the following features: • • • • • •

Operates at the 2.56GHZ ISM band which is globally available. Use frequency hopping spread spectrum technique. Can support up to the 8 devices in its network. Omni-directional, non-line of sight transmission through walls. The range of Bluetooth is 10m to 100m. 1mW power.

Presently, most electronic devices, such as cell phone handsets/headsets, laptop computers, and electronic organizers support the Bluetooth protocol. The protocol itself consists of a device to broadcast a unique 48-bit Media Access Control (MAC) address to devices within range. The broadcast happens at varying frequencies and random intervals (frequency-hopping within a 10.24-

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The Bluetooth technology provides security at both the application layer and the link layer. A total of three different information security objectives are to be reached one or all. Confidentiality means that the data can only be used by authorized users and/or parties. Integrity means that the data cannot be modified during transfer and stored by adversaries. Availability means that the data is always available for authorized use [11-14]. Bluetooth gives three main techniques to achieve security features: Encryption: The process of transforming data into a form that it cannot be understood without a key. Both data and control information can be encrypted. Authentication: means the ensuring of the identity of another user, so that he knows to whom is communicating with. In which to verify „who‟ is at the other end of the link. Authentication is performed for both devices and users. Authorization: The process of deciding, if a device is allowed to have access to a service. Authorization always includes authentication.

2 METHODOLOGY Due to the necessity of the attendance-monitoring system of students in classroom for any educational/universities institution and the powerful of Bluetooth wireless communication technology, this paper suggests flexible, easy and effective system for attendance-monitoring of students in universities. This system uses two different electronic devices to build the suggested attendance monitoring system: mobile phone of a teacher to record, in an electronic list, the attendance and absence of the student in the classroom. Computer server system on the other side that is responsible to connect, send, receive, and manage the database of all the records that is collected from the filled lists of attendance and absence of students from the mobile phones of the teachers in each classroom in the university.

3 ARCHITECTURE OF THE SUGGESTED SYSTEM In this section, we give the reader a simple description for the suggested system. The main components that the system was building from are: mobile phones, Bluetooth sensors and computer server. Fig.1represents a diagram shows how these components are connected within the system.

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International Journal of Computers & Technology Volume 4 No. 2, March-April, 2013, ISSN 2277-3061 sheet. The mobile's application was built to be appropriate for any OS type of mobile phone. This application also provide for a teacher resend to the server system via Bluetooth the Excel sheet after recording the attendance and absence of the students during the lecture at the classroom.

3.2 Network of Bluetooth Sensors

Fig 1: The System Components At the first side, Teacher‟s mobile phone represents any generation of mobile phone has a Bluetooth communication technology which is operate any type of OS. In the middle, Bluetooth sensors are a set of long range Bluetooth devices distributed in suitable places to form a network cover the whole area that serve by the suggested system. At the other side of the system, computer server is a computer system that is doing many functions: (search to find mobile phones, send SMS to mobile phones, send and receive files to/from mobile phones, manage database of the attendance lists, generate necessary reports, send emails, and other useful functions).

3.1 List of Students Names The major elements that transferred between the three components of the system are lists of students‟ names that are used to record the attendance and absence of students. The server system generates a list of students‟ names for each lecture in the desired date and time. And send it to the mobile phone of the teacher via Bluetooth network. This list is generated as an Excel sheet file format (.xls) which is containing all the necessary information of the lecture, the followingtable shows an example for the layout of the above mentioned list. Course Number: 0110112 Course Name: Introduction to Multimedia

The set of Bluetooth sensors are distributing to form a network, this network allows each teacher receive and send the files that contains lists of students' names via Bluetooth of his mobile phone. The signal's range of the Bluetooth sensors must be long enough to make the connection between the server system and the mobile phones of teachers always available. Therefore, the attendance monitoring system uses a specific type of Bluetooth sensors to satisfy high quality of connection.

3.3 Database in Computer Server The database of the system contains all the necessary relational tables to make the system operates in high performance. Some of this information is: Teacher Information:    

Teacher Name Teacher Phone Number Teacher Email Teacher Phone MAC Address

Course Information:  

Course Name Course Number

Lecture Information:    

Lecture Section Lecture Days Lecture Time Lecture Classroom Number

The following table shows an example of the values of each of the above information in the system:

Lecture Time: 9-10 Lecture Date: 15/01/2013 Section Number: 3 Teacher Number: 121 Teacher Name: Dr. Malik Khalil

1

Student Number

2

200811165

Ahmed Ali

3

200811170

Suhair Omer

4

200901102

Amar Mohammed

5

201022145

Zahra Hamid

Student Name

Attendant =1 /Absent=0

Teacher Name

Mohammed Ali

Teacher Phone Number

0799946110

Teacher Email

[email protected]

Teacher Phone MAC Address

01-23-45-67-89-AB

Course Name

Operating System

Course Number

0110112

Lecture Section

3

Lecture Days

Sunday

Lecture Time

9-10

Lecture Hall Number

5402

Before start the operation of the system, a mobile's application was installed in the mobile phone for each teacher to enable the teacher editing the above Excel

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4 OPERATION CYCLE OF THE SYSTEM Before listing the steps of the algorithm that is representing the operation cycle of the attendance monitoring system. We give below definitions for the terms and procedures used in it. A. Terms: CS: Computer Server MT: Mobile phone of a Teacher ET: Email of a Teacher DB: Database of CS BS: Bluetooth Sensors SL: Students names List TP: Time Period

International Journal of Computers & Technology Volume 4 No. 2, March-April, 2013, ISSN 2277-3061 D. Reports Generated by the System Due to the integrated database of the system, many reports can be generated from this database. Daily and monthly reports are automatically generated from the system. Some of these reports send to the mobile phone of each teacher, reports send to the decision makers in the educational institution, small reports send to each student via his mobile phone or his email, and other statistical reports that is created yearly. The system is very flexible to generate any report that is requested by any element in the educational institution.

5 EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS When we implemented a prototype of the attendance monitoring system in Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan, many strong points can be recorded for the system. 

B. Procedures: Search(MT,TP): CS search through the Bluetooth network to find MT has a lecture during PT. Monitor(MT): CS monitor through the Bluetooth network if MT want to connect with it.



Authenticate(MT): CS check the authentication of MT. Authorize(MT): CS check the authorization of MT.



Connect(MT):CS check the connection with MT. Send(SL,MT): CS uses the MAC Address of MT to send the students names list to it.



Receive(SL,MT): CS send the students names list to MT. Send(SL,ET): CS send the students names list to ET. C. Attendance Monitoring System Algorithms The system do two main operations simultaneously: Sending and Receiving. The system creates many threads to allow send and receive to/from more than one mobile phone of teachers in the same time. This will enhance the system performance.





a) Sending SL to MT If (Search(MP,TP) = found) Then



If (Authenticate(MP)=OK)and(Authorize(MP)=OK) Then If (Connect(MP) = available) Then Send(SL,MP)



Else Send(SL,MP) Else



Send(SL,ET)

b) Receiving SL from MT



If (Monitor(MT) = found) Then If (Connection(MT) = available) Then Receive(SL,MT)

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The system uses Bluetooth wireless network which is implicitly available and free in most electronic devices (like mobile phones, laptops and PC). Furthermore, this making the system works permanently and without interruption even in the case of sudden power failure for any reason within the institution. Build a database schema that contains a pre-defined profile for the mobile phone of each teacher within the group. The system search automatically from point to point through Bluetooth network. This search uses the shortest-path-first searching algorithm to enhance the performance of the system. The system uses the mobile MAC address of the mobile phone to make the connection between the computer server and mobile phone of teachers, where the MAC address will not be change even if the mobile name changed. The check for authentication and authorization in the system provides the participants in the system a secure connection between them. This can be done through smooth transition from paper-based system currently used to electronic system enjoy the ease and efficiency at the same time. The system employs information technology to upgrade the existing classic attendance monitoring system to be more powerful computerized system. Facilitate and speed up the completion of the process of recording attendance and absence of students by faculty member during the lecture in the classroom. Creating a centralized integrated database contains the records of attendance and absence for students within the educational institution. These records include detailed and accurate information about the commitment of the students to attend lectures. Achieve the highest levels of quality control in this area through the speed, accuracy and match for data and access to various reports relating to this aspect of the educational process within the educational institution. Help decision makers in the councils of departments in drawing a clear vision to schedule times of lectures in a more appropriate way to raise the ratio of the number of students whom attend the lectures. Automatically, inform electronically the absents students, at the appropriate time, whenever bypass their absences the acceptable percentage.

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6 CONCLUSIONS The fully computerized attendance monitoring system of students in classroom helps the educational institution to upgrade the slow and long procedure of register the attendance and absence of students in the classroom that is doing usually by the teacher by writing on the paper. Because the employment of wireless Bluetooth technology that is available in the most mobile phones and computer systems, we expect that the system will achieve success in any educational institution due to a wide range of using of the mobile phones by all persons. The fully integrated and accurate database includes all the related information about the attendance and absence of students certainly helps managers of the educational institution to draw a wise plan to reduce the absence of the student in the lectures. We recommend using and implementing this system in any educational institution want to upgrade and increase the quality the performance of its procedures.

REFERENCES [1] Patrick Purcell, Engineering Student Attendance at Lectures: Effect on Examination Performance, International Conference on Engineering Education(ICEE), September 3 – 7, 2007. [2] BHI Quality Management System Guidelines for recording Student Attendance, Version 1:2010 [3] Rita Kottasz, Reasons for Student Non-Attendance at Lectures, Spring, Vol. 2 (2), 2005. [4] P. Massingham, T. Herrington, Does Attendance Matter? An Examination of Student Attitudes, Participation, Performance andAttendance, Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, Vol. 3, Issue 2, 2006.

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International Journal of Computers & Technology Volume 4 No. 2, March-April, 2013, ISSN 2277-3061 [5] Jamil, T. Automatic attendance recording system using mobile telephone, 19th Telecommunications Forum (TELFOR), 22-24 Nov., Pages 1297-1299, 2011. [6] Bluetooth SIG. Specification of the Bluetooth System – Version 1.1B, Specification Vol. 1 & 2, February 2001. [7] Leine & Linde. Wireless health monitoring systems for encoders, July 2001. http://www.leinelinde.se. [8] P.-A. Wiberg and U. Bilstrup. Bluetooth in Industrial Environment. In Proceedings of IEEE WFCS‟00, Porto, Portugal, September 2000. [9] P.-A. Wiberg and U. Bilstrup. Wireless Technology in Industry - Applications and User Scenarios. In Proceedings of IEEE ETFA‟01, pages 123–131, France, October 2001. [10] H. Lee and S. Kauh, "A Node Ring Bluetooth Scatternet Formation Algorithm", IEICE Transactions on Communications, 2005, E88-B(12):4534-4544. [11] Stojmenovic and N. Zaguia, “Bluetooth scatternet formation in ad hoc wireless networks”. ZDNET White Paper, University of Ottawa. [12] The official Bluetooth Technology site. “CommunicationTopology”. Available at http://Bluetooth.com/Bluetooth/Learn/Works/Commu nications_Topology.htm. [13] Touro College Student Chapter of the ACM, Volume VI,January 2002. [14] Wikipedia, “Bluetooth” article. Available http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth

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