Online Classroom Attendance System based on Cloud Computing

Sri Listia Rosa and Evizal Abdul Kadir

Department of Informatics Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Islam Riau, Pekanbaru, Indonesia

Keywords:

Classroom Attendance, RFID Reader, Cloud Computing, Database

Abstract:

Attendance of students in the classroom is one of mark representation of total marking after ﬁnish the end

of class, some of the students are cheating they are attendance while manual system by sign in the form

of attendance. Furthermore, manual attendance is ineffective way while digital technology is available and

widely used nowadays and waste of papers. This research discusses on automatic attendance system for

students and lecturers, where every student before entering classroom have to tap their student card on RFID

reader and before out need to tap as well. Duration of time set as tolerance of lately as well as for early

out of the classroom. Similar to students, every lecture required to tap as well before and after teaching in a

classroom, besides that lecturer required to hold his card on RFID reader to on electricity in the classroom else

no electricity and no power in the classroom. The data of students and lecturer attendance with room number

is set and send to a database for student’s attendance and honorarium for lecturer. This system tested in a

classroom of Faculty of Engineering, Islamic University of Riau with the number of students 40 people. Data

collected by RFID reader passed to the cloud server which controls by University information technology

and connects to the payroll system in the ﬁnance department. The system gives effective and efﬁciency in

administration, while no more manual record as well as clerk, do not need to summary lecturer attendance at

the end of the month for an honorarium. Paperless and efﬁciency for staff to control and manual attendance is

one of the advantages of this system, and also students and lecturer unable to cheat their attendance in double

class teaching at the same time.

1 INTRODUCTION

Classroom teaching is a common method that

currently applying by most the academic institution

including in school and colleges. The conventional

method by having manually signed the attendance in

a sheet of paper then passed around the classroom

while lecturer conducts the teaching in the classroom

is wide implements nowadays. This method could

undoubtedly allow the students to do cheating about

their attendance in the classroom, where a student

may sign for an absent student. In addition, the help

form can easily be lost or lost during circulation.

A more rigorous approach, especially to prevent

students from cheating on their attendance, is also

boring, where a teacher tells each student’s name

based on a list of student names and validates each

student’s attendance. It has been proven that the form

of a manual method for bringing student attendance is

difﬁcult and time-consuming to verify each student.

Without control, whether conﬁrmed students respond

or not, consolidated attendance calculations are

another important task that can cause manual errors.

In some other cases, attendance sheets may be lost

or stolen by some students. The consequence of

such a problem with attendance notes on paper has

made it stressful and ineffective, especially in large

classes. As a result, there is a need to ﬁnd new and

modern ways to track and manage student attendance

records at higher academic learning institutions more

efﬁciently and effectively.

Therefore, it is very important to develop an

assistance system that is equipped with an online

database, especially to prevent data loss, as well as

to promote ecological and paperless and ecological

technology campaigns. In addition, this application

will help reduce time wasted, which will lead

to greater learning productivity in the classroom.

Several paperless assistance systems have been

developed, but they must be equipped with a

computer or RFID reader, which incurs additional

costs for hardware and can result in maintenance.

With that in mind, our goal is to overcome this

problem by having a system with minimum hardware

requirements and, at the same time, enhancing the

mobility aspects of the existing support system.

Rosa, S. and Kadir, E.

Online Classroom Attendance System based on Cloud Computing.

DOI: 10.5220/0009063900200025

In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Science, Engineering and Technology (ICoSET 2019), pages 20-25

ISBN: 978-989-758-463-3

Furthermore, to overcome such troubles as

mention in the above discussion, the required of

automated attendance system is required for system

management. Many way and technique are available

as the basic concept of the system. In this system

proposed an automatic student and staff (lecturer)

attendance system, where RFID reader installed in

every classroom and assign with an identity for

identiﬁcation of what classroom used.

2 RELATED WORKS

This section discussed on several works have been

done on previous research conducted. Some

of previous works review related systems and

student different for the methods in record student’s

attendance. The use of android based system for

students attendance as discussed in (Noor et al., 2015)

where the application installed then can be download

the students list from a designated web server. Refer

to students attend in the classroom after their scan the

card to Radio Frequency Identiﬁcation (RFID) reader

(Evizal et al., 2012). Additional of device such as

cameras used to support the system information and

student’s attendance conﬁrmation. Another research

discussed on this attendance system which elaborate

in (Varadharajan et al., 2016) describe the students

attendance without human interference. The used

of camera as a method to ﬁx in the classroom and

will capture the image when every student going into

room, the faces of students are detected and then

recognized and match to the database and ﬁnally the

attendance of student is marked. If the attendance

is marked as absent the message about the student’s

absent is send to their parents.

The others research is developed student

attendance system used a fraction of the classroom

for participation points and lead the students’

attendance list into a preset teaching system such

as attendance by checking every student, random

questioning based on the list, and quiz. Similar to

the ladder ranking system that widely used in current

online computer games, students can check their

ranking of accumulated absence and points in the end

of class as a long term stimulus for study. (Debiec,

2017; Gunawan and Kadir, 2017; Xiao et al., 2018).

The traditional student attendance system required

physically sign the attendance sheet every time

conduct lecture in the classroom. This method is

unnecessarily time consuming to notice and mark

student’s name on the attendance sheet. This

is happening that some students may accidentally

mark the others student name or willingly to do

it. Normally, the hard copy of attendance sheet

after a few weeks may get lost or easily get messy.

Used of smartphone such android technology will

help teacher to get student attendance easily by

online system then be able to check percentage

student attend the class as well to copy or print

it. By using the stored information, teacher easily

to mark student attendance, attendance percentage

calculations, marking intruders’ entry, send emails

or send message to the parent to keep them updated

about their child’s attendance at the school or college

(Islam et al., 2017; Tarimo and Hickey, 2016).

Online Biometric-enabled Class Attendance

by (Wei et al., 2017) develop and design to change

of misplaced and torn attendance register form in

various classroom in school or college. System used

biometric ﬁngerprint reader for every student before

entry the classroom. While the (Wei et al., 2017)

discuss on student attendance system used Near

Field Communication (NFC) system. The solution

be able to provides a traditional and mobile learning

system for classroom to the school or college and

university to enhance the interaction in the process of

learning between the students and reduce the number

workload given to the lecturers in summary of the

attendance while in the clasroom (Kadir et al., 2016)

All over previous research used normal online system

then in this research proposed a new method of online

system for student and lecturer pairing to make sure

lecturer attend in the classroom as well. Beside

that the use of cloud computing is one of additional

feature in this system to make sure data of student’s

attendee can be access staff in everywhere. Student

attendance information is very important is not only

for classroom marking but for ﬁnance department to

pay lecturer honorarium.

3 PROPOSED SYSTEM OF

STUDENT ATTENDANCE

The proposed solution for online student attendance

system uses several components and integration to

become a system that is able to manage student’s

attendance. Difference to the current system

that developed by other researchers, in this cloud

computing has been used for data management

system beside local server in an academic institution.

Figure 1 shows diagram of the student’s attendance

system, where Arduino and RFID reader is the main

unit for this system to control student and staff

attendance.

Student and staff card occupied with RFID chip

Online Classroom Attendance System based on Cloud Computing

Figure 1: NumberBlock diagram of student attendance

system.

which is Mifare 13.56 MHz and memory 1kB

thus in this case users of the RFID reader to

retrieve student or staff information by using an

RFID system. Information stored in student card

is limited, only the identity (ID) data stored with

some information, this system designed to retrieve

student ID information which is 9 characters same

as to student matric number, as well as for the

staff ID with 9 characters. Once ID of student or

staff received by RFID reader then the information

received in Arduino Microcontroller to compare to

student or staff ID in database, this case student

information linked to student academic management

system, where every student as they are accountable

for academic purpose, since the data and information

available then attendance system only connected

to the database without to set up a new database

management system. Similar to student database,

information of student classroom and schedule linked

to the academic management system which every

faculty have to manage lecture classroom, schedule,

subject, time, and student registration the subject.

Figure 2 shows a ﬂowchart of the attendance

system that ﬂows of the process in the system. All the

information start from student scanning the card then

system decide whether valid or information to process

or not then make the decision of student attendance.

3.1 RFID

Radio Frequency Identiﬁcation (RFID) is a

technology based on wireless communication and

Non-Line of Sight (NLOS) to retrieve information.

Radio wave concept in RFID is able to collect

information from the transponder (tag) to RFID

reader, with advantages of this technology and more

convenience for student attendance system thus apply

in this system. Figure 3 shows a sample of student ID

Figure 2: Flowchart of the student attendance system to

process the information.

card used in this system with an emended RFID chip.

Figure 3: Sample of student ID card.

Similar to the student ID card, every lecturer and

staff occupied with RFID chip in ID card as well, thus

the process of data retrieve same as to student ID card.

Figure 4 shows a sample of lecturer and staff ID card

with an embedded RFID chip.

ICoSET 2019 - The Second International Conference on Science, Engineering and Technology

Figure 4: Sample of Lecturer and staff ID card.

3.2 Arduino

Arduino is a project based on an open source system

that easy to use by the developer, hardware and

software integrated system developed in a package.

Currently, the Arduino module widely used in many

application, thus in this attendance system used

Arduino for microcontroller system. Figure 5 shows a

picture of the Arduino module connected to an RFID

reader to read and retrieve card information. All

the information analysis and to be matched to the

database as well as class schedule and veriﬁcation

then ﬁnal information stored in the database. In

order to be accessed by any party that required this

information thus a cloud database setup to keep all

the information.

Figure 5: An Arduino module with RFID reader.

3.3 Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a technology in computer science

recently become an alternative to change from the

local server to the cloud. The demand for availability

system resources in a computer and especially for

the storage of data and computing for power system

without direct to a local server that manages by the

user. The term cloud computing is in general used

to describe data centres available to many users over

internet access. Figure 6 shows a conﬁguration of a

cloud computing to be accessed by any user and the

management system.

Figure 6: Conﬁguration of cloud computing.

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Application of student attendance system has been

developed and tested in the real classroom, some class

of lecture tested with this system. Figure 7 shows a

screenshot of student and lecturer attendance system

in the classroom.

Figure 7: Application student attendance system.

In this case, an average of students in a classroom

Online Classroom Attendance System based on Cloud Computing

is 30 to 40 students, in the previous student used

manual sheet form that must sign to proof attendance

in a lecture class, with this application student just

wipe the ID card to RFID reader installed in front

of a classroom. Once student wipes the card, if the

status of the student is matched to class schedule and

classroom then the information recorded and send to

the data center, in this case, cloud computing used

to store all the information. Maximum tolerance for

the late in the classroom is 15 minute, so after late

duration student consider absence although they wipe

the ID card then no record keeps in the database.

Similar to late toleration duration, the student must

wipe ID card to RFID reader before the class ﬁnish

to record the attendance, in this case, the duration

is 15 before time schedule and 10 minutes after the

schedule that every student must wipe the card else no

out class recorded and student consider attendance not

complete. Figure 8 shows a system for management

before class start have to set by the ofﬁcer.

Figure 8: Attendance schedule system.

A report of student attendance system generated

once lecture class ﬁnished, the report shows for

every student in a classroom that attends the subject

conducted by the lecturer. The report also recorded

attendance for all the weeks, in this case, 16 weeks

to complete a subject in a semester. Figure 9 shows a

report sheet generated by this system.

Figure 9: Student attendance report sheet.

All the information for every student and

classroom including staff or lecturer conducted the

lecture in classroom sent to the integrated database

management system, the central database manages

for a student account and payroll system for lecturer,

this system assists in management to calculate hour

of every lecturer in a month and amount to pay the

honorarium. The information on student attendance

record in cloud computing, then further development

is to create a mobile system for the report to parent or

guardian.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Student attendance system will beneﬁt for an

academic institution, instead of using a manual

system that raises many issues and uncontrolled for

student cheating. The system tested in several of

lecture classroom, out of 38 students listed in the

classroom where 36 students attend in the class and

2 students’ absence recorded for the ﬁrst testing,

continue by 4 weeks. The system success to records

all student and lecture attendance then record in a

database. The system helps the ofﬁcer and efﬁcient

system; management staff just verify the lecture in the

classroom then conﬁrmation before the ﬁnal record.

Cloud computing used as a database to make easy

data retrieval from other parties.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Authors would like to say thank you very much to

KEMENRISTEKDIKTI Indonesia for funding this

project and Universitas Islam Riau, Indonesia.

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