Android-based Class Attendance Monitoring
In our generation today, life is greatly improved by advance technologies such as software, hardware and inventions that are created to ease our daily lives. One of the new trends in technology today is Android OS which can be found on smartphones and tablet computers. The aim of this study is to apply these advance technologies to help us people in academic environment. The most common basic issue in school management is checking of the student’s attendance. Calling roll numbers or names of the students like traditional ways has turned out to be an old thing. Implementing such a system to the academic environment using an Android phone can help the professors to ease their daily routine in checking the attendance of his/her students. The main purpose in creating this application is to make the work of the professor to be simpler and automated and to maximize the time in teaching his/her lesson. Through his/her Android phone, he/she can scan the ID of his/her students in checking their attendance.
The application software that will be implemented in an Android phone includes a database system that will insert, delete, update, and query. The database that we’ll be using is the SQLite. From the article “An Overview of Android SQLite Databases” (n.d.), SQLite is an embedded, relational database management system (RDBMS). Most relational databases (Oracle and MySQL) are standalone server processes that run independently, and in cooperation with, applications that require database access. SQLite is referred to as embedded because it is provided in the form of a library that is linked into applications. As such, there is no standalone database server running in the background. All database operations are handled internally within the application through calls to functions contained in the SQlite library. The importance of persistent data storage becomes even more evident when taking into consideration the somewhat transient lifecycle of the typical Android Application. With the ever-present risk that the Android runtime system will terminate an application component to free up resources, a comprehensive data storage strategy to avoid data loss is a key factor in the design and implementation of any application development strategy.
The application software also includes a barcode scanner that can be use through the camera of the Android phone. Similarly, an article entitled “Android Barcode Scanner Using ZXing” (n.d.), is integrating barcode scanning directly into the application without relying on having the separate ZXing application installed, you can use an open source project and the code is available for free. The scan result depends on the camera quality and resolution. ZXing has relatively fast processing.
This project is an innovation of attendance monitoring in manually checking the attendance of students/employees. Through this application software, things turn easier, better and balanced. Things are made simpler in school and errors chances are reduced with this application.
Generally, the research objective is to create/design and develop an Android-based Class Attendance Monitoring. This application software will turn the manual attendance checking into more advance technological monitoring class attendance. Moreover the software application was geared to meet the following specifications or objectives: To develop a software application that will check student’s class attendance To interface database system on Android phones
To use Android Devices that monitors student attendance
To design a cost effective attendance monitoring system
To accurately monitor time-in record
To accurately and reliably monitor student’s class attendance With these objectives, the following questions were addressed: What are the other
alternatives/existing monitoring attendance system? How available/to what extent is the availability of the existing monitoring system? Is it cost effective?
To what extent is the accuracy of the existing monitoring system?
The importance of this study is to help people, specifically a professor in an academic environment in manually checking the attendance of his/her students. The purpose of this project is to ease the work of professors and will minimize the time allotment in student attendance checking. In like manner, it will also help students to be motivated in attending class because of this innovation of manual checking of attendance. This application software can also be use by some employed person who works in the office by just using their Android phones in checking their time-in record.
Figure 1 shows the research framework of this project. The IPO method will help to trace the processes that will be use in order to complete the application software.
METHOD
Research Design
This project proposed to develop a software application’s functions to be accurate and reliable. The tools that we’ll be using in creating the application software will be: Hardware
Android Phone or any gadget with Android OS
The camera of the gadget will be used to scan the barcode of the student Software
SQLite
For the database of the students
Participants or Subjects
The participants that will use this project will be the professors and students in an academic environment. There are 10 individuals that have been selected to evaluate the research project. Five (5) from professors and five (5) from the researchers. Instruments/Sources of Data
For this project, we will be using Likert Scale which is one of the most widely used approaches to scaling responses in survey research. Procedure
In creating the application software, a survey questions will be distributed to the respondents. They will test the application software using the Android gadget. Aside from the survey questions, a series of test will be conducted and data gathered will be used to calibrate the device to its most accurate and effective setting.
REFERENCES
Android barcode scanner using Zxing(2011-2013). Retrieved from
http://www.mysamplecode.com/2011/09/android-barcode-scanner-using-zxing.html An Overview of Android SQLite Databases (July 2013). Retrieved fromhttp://www.techotopia.com/index.php/An_Overview_of_Android_SQLite_Databases
