CHUKWUEMEKA ODUMEGWU OJUKWU UNIVERSITY, ULI.

P. M. B. 02, ULI

ANAMBRA STATE

A SEMINER PRESENTED BY

EDOZIUNO UCHECHUKWU MATHIAS

2017 224 097

ON

A MOBILE FRAMEWORK OF DIGITAL PHOTO ALBUM AND LECTURE

ATTENDANCE SYSTEM.

A PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE AWARD OF

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (B.Sc) IN DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

FACULTY OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE

AUGUST 2021
 DECLARATION PAGE

I hereby declare that this research project has not been previously presented either wholly or
partly for the award of any degree in any university or higher institution of learning

………………….. …………………..

Date Signature
 CERTIFICATION

I, Edoziuno Uchechukwu Mathis, a student of Chkwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu university,

Faculty of physical science and department of computer science, with the registration number
2017 224 097 has satisfactory completed this seminar in partial fulfillment of the requirement of
bachelor of science (B.Sc) degree in computer science.

……………………………….. ……...………………

Mr. Ezenwaegbu Chimaobi. Date

DEDICATION
This seminar is dedicated to God almighty for the gift of knowledge, endurance, sound health
and his grace in my life.

ACKNOWLEGDGEMENT
 ABSTRACT.

This work is motivated by the desire to improve the manual method of recording attendance of
students present in a particular lecture. Over the years, many things have changed in tertiary
institutions such curriculum and learning facilities. But the method of attendance remains almost
unchanged. Lecturers have continued to adopt the pen and paper way of taking attendance of
students. This method of attendance is fool-proof since a student can write for another student. In
situations where attendance calls are made, a student can also sit in and answer for another
student. Hence Object Oriented Hypermedia Design Methods was adopted to develop a mobile
framework for digital photo album and lecture attendance system. Tools such as Java, XML (for
material design), android studio (for IDE) and SQLite (for data storage) were used. The result is
a mobile attendance system that stores and displays the passport of each student in the lecture
room to allow easy verification of identity. The system is easy to use since lecturers will have it
installed on their mobile phones. Taking attendance is a one-click operation for each student.
Since attendance has ten marks of out 30 in continuous assessment, the application calculates the
score of each student out of 10 marks at the end of the semester.
 CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study.

Attendance, class attendance and lecture attendance are terms that are used to depict a process in
which an instructor records the names of students who attended a particular lesson, lecture or any
educational session. This process is usually done as part of a continuous assessment that
precedes examination. Students are expected to attend classes regularly. Classroom attendance is
often one of the most necessary and important means of learning and, in many classes, is
essential to the educational objectives of a given course.

Attendance taking is important to every school, college and any other educational institute.It
becomes necessary in tertiary institutions as it is one of the requirements for being eligible for
semester examinations. One of the most important things to students to achieve academic success
is also one of the most basic which is going to school every day. By attending class regularly,
students are more likely to keep up with the daily lectures and assignments, and take quizzes and
tests on time. In both classroom settings and workplaces, attendance may be mandatory. Poor
attendance by a student in a class may affect their grades or other evaluations. Poor attendance
may also reflect problems in a student's personal situation, and is an indicator that "students are
not developing the knowledge and skills needed for later success" (Cynthia Franklin et. al.,
2008). Attendance register is a helpful tool that allows you to record students' presence at or
participation in course-related sessions. They allow you to add information such as class lists and
events in order to quickly and easily record student attendance.For students in elementary school
and high school, laws may require compulsory attendance, while students at higher levels of
education may be penalized by professors or the institution for lack of attendance.In Nigerian
universities such as Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, lecture attendance is
obtained manually. Basically, this involves literally passing attendance sheet around for students
to sign beside their names and another method would require the lecturer to call out the students’
names one by one and register their attendance. This traditional process of taking student’s
attendance is time consuming and takestoo much effort especially to record and to maintain it.
Lecturers are required to callout the names of each student one by one and this process would
consume time especiallyfor a large class. Another method is to distribute an attendance sheet
wherestudents can check their credentials and sign it. However, this method is not foolproof as
students can be dishonest by signing on their friends’ behalf. In general, the manual ortraditional
way in recording attendance is usually time consuming and may distractthe teaching exercise.
Since traditional attendance system uses pen and paper, registers are stored and maintained.
When attendance calculations are done at the end of the semester, it is very hectic process and
also includes chances of human error.The attendance rate is important because students are more
likely to succeed in academics when they attend school consistently. It's difficult for the teacher
and the class to build their skills and progress if a large number of students are frequently absent.

1.2 Statement of Problem

A thorough investigation was made of the existing method of lecture attendance taking and
problems was found which motivated the development of a new system

a. The attendance lists do not truly reflect the number of students that were actually in the
class as a student can sign in for another student who is absent.Also records can be
manipulated for favoritism.
b. The time required for the attendance exercise to complete is not worth it since lecturers
use time meant for lectures to do the roll call themselves.
c. Paper based time sheets depend on manual labour to keep them updated and correct
without human interaction they are useless, having someone manage means a lot of
unnecessary effort. This costs money and time.
d. The present attendance system does not support pictures, hence not fool proof. Students
can sit in for another student and answer for the person such that the lecturer will not
know that it is not the real student.
e. Present attendance system is stored on files which a liable to loss, misuse or damage.
Also, it cannot be stored in the cloud for real time access or backup.
f. Attendance points which make up the continuous assessment are not automatically
calculated on paper based attendance system.
g. Traditional attendance system uses pen and paper. Then registers are stored and
maintained. When attendance calculations are done, its very very hectic process and also
includes chances of human error.
1.3 Aim and Objectives of the study

The aim of this research is to discuss a mobile framework for digital photo album and lecture
attendance system while the specific objectives are:

a. To create an automated mobile system that will automate the attendance process, improve
efficiency and automatically calculate the points for each student at the end of the
semester.
b. To create a highly secured mobile app that stores the attendance history of students
studying a particular course at any given time.
c. To create a mobile system that supports real time access by connecting the application to
cloud based systems that can be accessed anytime from anywhere. Its available online as
soon as attendance is saved.
d. To develop an attendance system that promotes accuracy since it supports pictures of
students in a particular class. The pictures help the lectures to check that no student is
sitting for another.
e. To create a system that is convenient and fast thus eliminating the user of pen and paper.
The process is smooth and the attendance records are stored on the phone.

1.4 Significance of the study

This research will have great significance in tertiary institutions because it will change the way
attendance is taken.Automated attendance marking system can help schools and higher education
in many ways. There is no doubt that a photo album and lecture attendance marking system will
help save time and money by eliminating a great deal of manual processes involved in
attendance. Also point gotten from attendance are automatically added so that a lecturer can
easily copy it and add to the continuous assessment. With automatic class attendance system,
lecturers can more accurately and quickly track student’s time in the classroom. This research
provides a powerful cloud-based solution for schools and higher education institutions to reduce
lecturer workload and improve efficiencies with automated system. It works to ensure attendance
is maintained by performing a cycle of activities that analyzes student absences. This research
will aim to reduce paperwork and save time and money with mobile and cloud-based attendance
management system. It will also eliminate duplicate data entry and errors in time and attendance
entries. It will also improve visibility to track and manage student attendance absenteeism in
tertiary institutions and campuses. Another significance is real time retrieval of information. The
attendance records are synchronized on the server, therefore, it is easy to retrieve it anywhere
anytime provided there is internet. This research will mean advantage for lecturers since the
system can auto-generate various types of reports of class or student attendance. There is
increased security and confidentiality with role-based permissions to users. An automated time
and attendance system is a way for an institution to save money and eliminate the frustrations of
a manual process. It increases efficiency, manage labor costs and maximize results by
implementing an electronic, integrated time and attendance system.Attendance software reduces
the risk of human error and ensures and easy, impartial, and orderly approach in addressing
specific needs without any confusion. In fact, Time and Attendance software have an accuracy
rate of more than 99% versus manual systems by eliminating errors in data entry and
calculations.Productivity increases because the process is seamless and makes day-to-day
attendance markingmore efficient and convenient. It eliminates legacy practices and frees up
lecturer’s time, and provides the institution with timely labor data to more effectively manage
their operations. Above all, this new will increase lecturer’s satisfaction.

1.5 Scope of study

This research covers the area of implementing a mobile digital album that replaces the physical
one. It also discusses the attendance marking system that is present in most tertiary institution
and addresses a method for improvement. It shows how an automated attendance system is better
than a manual one. It brings the attendance system to a widely used mobile operating system –
android.

1.6 Limitation of Study

During the course of this research, the researcher encountered the following influences that the
researcher cannot control which affected the quality of the work:

Privacy policy: some information and procedures were deemed private by exam officers, hence
they refused to disclose some information which could be vital to the development of the new
system.
Inadequate research materials: Research materials were not available hence the new system
was implemented with only the research materials available. Efforts were made to develop a
functional system with the material and tools available.

Poor power supply: There was poor power supply in the course of designing, developing and
implementing the system, gasoline generator was acquired.

Poor network coverage: due to poor network coverage, internet connection was slow. This
posed a very serious limitation to the work. Slow network also reduced the researcher’s
participation in peer feedback activities.

1.7 Definition of terms

MOBILE: able to move freely or easily

FRAMEWORK: a set of ideas, principles, agreements, or rules that provides the basis or
outline for something intended to be more fully developed at a later stage.

DIGITAL:representing data as numbers.

ALBUM:a book or binder with blank pages or pockets for keeping collected items such as
postage stamps, photographs, mementos, and autographs.

LECTURE:a session of a class at which a lecture is given.

ATTENDANCE: an instance of being at an event, or the practice of regularly going to a school,

church, or other institution.

SYSTEM: a combination of related parts organized into a complex whole.

 CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

Literature review is referred to a text of a scholar paper, which includes the current knowledge
including substantive findings, as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a
particular topic. Literature review also focuses on the knowledge and ideas established on a topic
as well as their strengths and weaknesses. This days, technology is being used to replace the
traditional systems in order to speed up the system processes. Many attendance systems have
been developed and implemented in many schools and some of them will be reviewed in this
section.

2.1 FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS

2.1.1 Attendance

This is the concept of people, individually or as a group, appearing at a location for a previously
scheduled event. Measuring attendance is a significant concern for many organizations, which
can use such information to gauge the effectiveness of their efforts and to plan for future efforts.

2.1.2 Attendance Management

This is the act of managing attendance or presence in a work or classroom setting. In

both classroom settings and workplaces, attendance may be mandatory. Poor attendance by a
student in a class may affect their grades or other evaluations. Poor attendance may also reflect
problems in a student's personal situation, and is an indicator that students are not developing the
knowledge and skills needed for later success.

For students in elementary school and high school, laws may require compulsory attendance,

while students at higher levels of education may be penalized by professors or the institution for
lack of attendance.
2.1.3 Attendance Management System

This is referred to any system whether paper based system or computerized system used in
keeping track of attendance in a work or classroom setting. For years now, various forms of
attendance system have been built and implemented into various organizations.

Attendance control has traditionally been approached using time clocks, timesheets, and time

tracking software, but attendance management goes beyond this to provide a working
environment which maximizes and motivates employee attendance. Recently it has become
possible to collect attendance data automatically through using Real-time location systems,
which also allow for cross-linking between attendance data and performance. Attendance
management takes place in all educational campuses be it university, college or school.

2.1.3.1 Types of attendance Management System

There are many types of attendance systems and some of them are

 Time Card: The least expensive option is a high-tech version of the old mechanical
punch clock. Employees are issued a time card about the size of a credit card that they
swipe on a machine similar to a credit card machine. While data is transferred
automatically to produce computer-generated timesheets, thus eliminating all the
manual paperwork, the one flaw is the same as the old punch clock: it allows for
“buddy punching.” It's easy enough for someone to swipe a co-worker’s card who
isn’t really there.

 Web-Based Login Stations: These are best suited to situations where employees

work mostly from laptops or personal computers. A static IP address is triggered
every time employees log in to their computers, thus providing a digital “punch-in.”

 Biometric: Although the price of biometric clocks is higher than the alternatives,
they are still often the most cost-efficient option. The clocks work seamlessly with
your Time and Attendance software, so there is little room for human error and you
 will save an incredible amount of time by not having to enter punches in manually.
Additionally, they only have a 3% rate of time theft, so they will end up paying for
themselves before long. 

 Paper Punch Cards: are fairly efficient in the time theft department (only 5%) and is
a relatively inexpensive option. However, they reduce productivity in the amount of
time it takes to gather and input data, and in the corporate world that can affect
productivity significantly.

 Mobile Application Attendance System:With every employee owning at least 1

mobile device, what can be more convenient than having a mobile application
attendance system? Companies just need to setup the employee ID and the application
is good to go. The mobile application attendance system is easy to set up and easy to
implement. Furthermore, some of the payroll systems already have their own mobile
attendance application. However, for those standalone mobile attendance
applications, most of them have limited settings and may not be suitable for all
companies.

 Interactive Voice Response (IVR): This is primarily used by companies with

employees working in the field or at remote locations. Employees clock in by simply
calling in over a landline or cell phone.

2.2 REVIEW OF RELATED WORKS

NFC technology and student attendance system has existed for quite some time.We refer to NFC
as a system that transfers data in a short distance wirelessly and thestandards communication
protocol are based on existing RFID standards (Ayu, M. A. and Ahmad, 2014). Theintroduction
of NFC technology allows developers to write applications such as attendancesystem, ticketing,
cashless payment, and membership authentication (Subpratatsavee, P., Promjun, T., Siriprom,
W., Sriboon, W, 2014).

Biometric is another contactless technology that has been successfully

commercializedworldwide where it uses the physical and behavioral aspect of a person to
secureauthentication. Using retina, voice, and/or thumbprint allows the biometric system
touniquely distinguished one person from the other (Wahab, A.H., Kadir, H.A., Yusof, M.N.M.,
Sanudin, R., and Tomari, M.R, 2009). However, one of the issues withimplementing biometric in
student attendance system is that its high-tech nature requiresquite an expensive tool; therefore,
their implementation might not be cost-effectivefor an institution.

One of the oldest technological break-through was the barcode system(Wahab et al, 2009). It is
farmore affordable than the biometric system and is still effective in certain aspects.Barcode uses
unique identification of retrieving data and make use of symbols generally,like a bar, vertical,
space, square and dots which contains different widths. Someinstitutions use this method but it
was reported to be less reliable (Wahab et al, 2009).

The most promising research conducted by several different researchers is aboutRadio

Frequency Identification (RFID)(Wahab et al, 2009), (Mohamed, A.A, U Kameswari, J.,
2013). It has been reported that RFID is oneof the most suitable technology for a student
environment particularly for an attendancesystem. For instance, Mohamed et al report that the
innovation of a systemthat records data automatically in universities using RFID is a suitable
solution totheir problem in recording students’ attendance.

One of the examples from existing projects related to NFC is the TouchIn NFCsupported
attendance system(Ayu et al). The system focuses on using NFC for improving themanual
approach of recording attendance. The system is equipped with NFC taggingthat keeps the
attendance record using web-based method. The system componentsincluded the reader unit and
server unit; reader unit reads the tag (student’s credentials)and the server unit records it.

Another project that consists of using NFC for attendance is the Attendance Systemusing NFC
Technology and Embedded Camera Device on Mobile Phonereported bySubpratatsavee et al.
In their study, they have increases the level of security of theprevious research by making use of
the camera located on the back of everysmartphone. To avoid students passing around their NFC
tag for attendance, the camerais used for verification that whoever tags it must be the same
person as in the photo,which of course would be monitored by the lecturer or administrator. This
projectuses the concept of one centralized server to store its data efficiently while all
relatedmobile phones connected to the server. Users can also import and export data effortlessly.
Bucicoiu&Tapus (2013) propose a location-based authentication for attendancesystem using
NFC technology integrated with Moodle. The system exploits bothNFC and pictures to ensure
double verification on student attendance. The unique partabout this project is that it uses a
Moodle, which is one of the most popular e-learningplatforms. By applying Moodle, lecturers
can verify their students more effectivelyand a lot faster than verifying them
individually.Enabling various functions and creative uses of NFC will further improve and
enhanceprevious research in terms of what is lacking in certain fields for instance in thesecurity
and performance aspects (Farrow, R.: Smart Card and Security Future, 2002). Extracting
information on what these researchesare providing and what they are lacking are the key to
pushing ourselves towardsinnovatively implementing and improving NFC-based student
attendance system. Inthe next Section, we describe about the method we used in identifying
studies relatedto the use of NFC in managing students’ attendance.

Manual Attendance System

During the academic year 2001/2, the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science undertook a
major investigation into student retention and progression. In line with the findings from other
institutions, particularly the ‘new’ universities which had pioneered widening access, poor
retention was variously attributed to lack of preparedness, poor integration, wrong course choice,
lack of feedback, problems with finance and accommodation, amongst others(Yorke, 2002;
Tinto,1987;Thomas, 2001). Some of these factors resulted in drop-out, some in failure or delayed
progression. A number of follow-up studies, both here and elsewhere (Parmar and Trotter,
2004;Dodgson and Bolam,2002;Yorke and Longden 2004) have confirmed these findings and
recommended strategies for improving retention and progression. One common finding of all
such projects, however, has been that poor attendance generally links to poor retention and it is
this aspect of the student experience which is addressed in this report.

Of course, there are many possible reasons for poor attendance – the need for paid employment
to support one’s studies, ill-health, lack of adequate child-care, inability to pay for transport to
name but a few. And there is an increasing tendency to lay this problem at the door of the
widening participation agenda – to argue that the massification of higher education is the root
cause of the apparent lack of engagement by students. Nevertheless, whatever the cause, it is
clear that students who do not attend inevitably get into difficulties. To be sure, we all know of
those who never attend any classes and manage to get a first or upper second classification but
they are a minority of students. Usually however, those who do not attend encounter significant
practical problems: they cannot access library resources; they fail to develop IT skills; and they
are confused by the timetable. They are therefore more likely to miss coursework deadlines and
other important milestones in the student year – all this in addition to a lack of knowledge about
the content of the course.

It might be argued that we do recruit many people who are never going to succeed, evidenced by
their inability to even arrive for induction sessions or registration. Students themselves might say
that if the unit material was more accessible, more relevant, less boring – they might be prepared
to attend more often. Such arguments may have merit but it seemed to us that some kind of
culture of non-attendance does set in very early on, for a variety of reasons, and one way we
might bring about a change in culture could be to show that we as staff are sufficiently concerned
about attendance to take monitoring and follow up seriously. This report describes the pilot we
have undertaken to address this challenge. Firstly, we describe the problems with the paper-
based system we had been using. We then describe the web-based monitoring system which was
trialed last year. A number of problems have been identified but there have clearly been benefits
and these are also assessed here. Finally, we de scribe current developments with the system.

Problems with Paper

In line with most other departments, the Sociology department expect that staff will take
registers in seminars but accept that attendance monitoring for lectures is usually impractical.
However, it was very clear that there was a variety of practice, ranging from nothing at all in
some cases to detailed spreadsheet reports even showing coursework marks in others. A standard
paper based register form was available but tutors tended to adopt methods they were
comfortable with, such as passing round a sign-up sheet and filing it or filling in more detailed
record sheets after the session. Monitoring of attendance by year tutors was supposed to take
place at key points in the year – survey weeks - but in reality it was often so difficult to get
information from staff that a partial view was all that could ever be achieved. There was also
uncertainty about who should deal with nonattendance – should it be the personal tutor, the year
tutor, the unit tutor or the programme leader? - and many cases fell through the net. Difficulties
were compounded by having students from different programmes mixed together and uncertainty
at the beginning of the year about who was supposed to be in which class, especially in the first
year when information comes relatively late in the day.

A system of ‘chasing’ students was in place but depended on getting information from tutors.
Even when this was forthcoming, it was often partial, resulting in several letters being sent to
students about different units. Furthermore, if a student missed three classes, received a letter,
turned up for a class and then missed two more they would get the same letter again. The more
letters they receive, the more the students perceive this as an administrative matter of no real
import. The message that we are not really bothered about attendance and only pay lip service to
our procedures seeps out to the student body and the culture of non-attendance worsens.

What was therefore needed was a system of recording attendance which could be shown to
reduce the burden on staff both in terms of record keeping and communication and which would
demonstrate to students how seriously we were taking the issue. We also needed a more robust
system for chasing non-attendance with rational follow-up procedures. A project team was
established to look at ways in which this could be done and a web –based solution was
developed

Android Application Based Attendance System

In (2013) auth. Seema Rao proposes a fingerprint identification system to mark attendance. Here
the author first stores the current student fingerprint features using ridges, arch, loops and whorls

using feature extraction and stores it in database. Then when students enter the classroom they

scan their thumb on the fingerprint scanner which in turn matches the data stored in the database

and marks the matched student as present in attendance. The feature extraction again takes place
during attendance marking and they are compared with that of those stored in database. When a

match is found the student is marked present for that lecture.

Freya. J. Vora, Pooja. L. Yadav, Rhea. P. Rai, Nikita. M. Yadav (2016) have implemented a
login system by which a student can login to a server and mark his or her attendance. They have
stored all information on a database and have a login system. After logging into the logging
system the student can mark his attendance anytime and after which the lecturer will send the
attendance to the server system using GPRS. The lecturer can enrol new students or delete
existing ones, modify information about existing students.

In (2014) the authors Mr. GautamShanbhag and Mr. Hussain Jivaniuse android system as well as
a biometric system for authentication. Here the professor logs into the system using the provided

username and password. After logging into the system he creates a lecture schedule by providing

all the details of the lecture that include timing, duration of lecture, subject, topic in the subject

and location. The students then enter the class and login into server give their attendance. After

that they punch their fingerprint in portable fingerprint scanner and if they match their attendance

is confirmed.

In (2016) the authors S.P. Avinaash Ram and J. Albert Mayan have developed an attendance
system for employees. Here they track every employee within premise using the GPS on the
employeedevice. The admin has the IMEI number of the devices of the employee. The employee
will register attendance using the smart phone. He can be tracked using the GPS and other staff
can also know the location of other people using their GPS. Once the employee leaves the
premise he is logged out and the information is stored.

In (2014) the authors Unnati A. Patel and Dr. Swaminarayan Priya R. use RFID and facial

recognition to avoid errors or prevent loopholes in their project. But by using RFID requires an

extra hardware cost and all phones do not have NFC, as well as facial recognition is not very

reliable. It may happen that the facial recognition system may fail to identify a legit user of the

attendance system.
In (2009) the authors Tabassam Nawaz, SaimPervaiz, ArashKorrani,Azhar-ud-din use fingerprint

mechanism to authenticate the students with constraints on time to mark the attendance. But as

we know not all students can simultaneously, which would be a problem for a class with huge

class size. As well there needs to be a fingerprint sensor deployment and the fingerprint sensor

cannot be fully correct. Furthermore, they do not use any other technique to mark the attendance

which would make it difficult for a student to mark his attendance when his fingerprint would

not match due to some problem.

Monitoring of Attendance Using an Electronic Card.

Several techniques and methods have been accepted to effectively monitor students’ attendance.
Shoewuet al (2011) proposed a cost-effective computer-based embedded attendance
management system that allowed the electric monitoring of attendance using anelectronic card.
These cards, which contain all necessary information on the individual, are inserted into a
machine that records the time and other information to a server.

In another example, Cheng etal (2005)designed and implemented a system that applies user
identification and a passwordfor authentication. However, the issue with these electronic card or
password-based systems is that they allow for the sharing or dishonest use of the cards or
passwords.This problem can be addressed by using a biometric recognition system, such
asfingerprint or irisrecognition.A system was proposed and implemented by the authors for using
fingerprint scansto record attendance and generate reports after a fixed duration. To have their
attendance verified, individuals simply had toinsert their fingers into a fingerprint reader.

In another attempt to address the problem of misuse of electronic attendance-taking systems,

Kadry et al(2013) proposed a wireless attendance management system using an individual’s iris,
which is unique, for authentication. In this system, a scanner is used to scanthe iris and
automatically log in the person. Unlike fingerprints, the iris is more preserved from the external
environment. However, both fingerprint- andiris-recognition-based approachesrequire extra
devices and scanners, usually connected to a server.In radio frequency identification (RFID)-
based methods, attendance is recorded in the same way as for the fingerprint reader, with the
only difference being the tools used; that is, the RFID card. The RFID card stores user’s
information on the card as data. This data is encrypted into the card, which is then used as akey
to record when the user arrives.In our work, we address the problem of the misuse of electronic
attendance-taking systems byusing the internet connectivity of smartphones to monitor the
presence or attendance of an individual.

Smartphone-based monitoring systems prevent the expense of additional scanning devices by

leveraging on the fact that almost all student’s ownsmartphone. In our system, an area is fixed
for every student. When he or she enters or exits that area, a time stamp is saved and the system
calculates the duration of any particular student residing within the area.

According to Mahfudzah (2009), development of student’s attendance system is to gives

motivation to student due to the fact that the student’s attendance records reflect to student
academic achievements in the higher academic institutions.
 CHAPTER THREE

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND SYSTEM ANALYSIS

3.1 Introduction
This chapter reveals the investigation and analysis made into the existing system after which it
was necessary to develop a new system. A systematic, theoretical analysis of the methods
applied to the development of the new system was shown. This comprises the theoretical
analysis of the body of methods and principles associated with the methods adopted in this
research. Further, a detailed analysis of the new system is made to show how the advantages of
the new system outweighs the strengths of the new system. The weaknesses found in the existing
system were taken note of so as to create a new system that will correct the weaknesses. An
overview of the new system was presented such that the architecture that was used for
developing a software product was explained.

3.2 Methodology
The methodology adopted in this work is OOHDM (Object Oriented Hypermedia Design
Method). The Object-Oriented Hypermedia Design Method is a mature approach for building
hypermedia and web applications by describing different design models which are then mapped
onto a running application. This method is suitable for this research since android mobile
application is a hypermedia application. Object Oriented Hypermedia Design Method consists of
five activities namely requirements gathering, conceptual design, navigational design, abstract
interface design and implementation. The sequence of steps to develop a mobile/web application
according to OOHDM are described and evaluated:

Requirements gathering: at this stage, the functional requirements of the mobile application are
captured and specified. Roles and their tasks are also obtained. Next, the possible application
scenarios are described. Scenarios are narrative descriptions of how the application may be used
to allow actors to perform each task. Scenarios must be grouped in functional units defined in
Unified Modelling Language such as Use Cases. Because a set of related scenarios have been
defined for different actors, the use case for this set must identify the actors it belongs to. Hence,
a Unified Modelling Language such as the Use Case Diagram was used to depict the
requirements of the android mobile application. The Use Case Diagram is shown in figure 3.1.

Retrive Class List Mark Attendance

<<extend>>

Load Photo Card

Save
Lecturer
View Attendance

Login
<<extend>>

<<include>>
Compile Attendance

Operations

Add User Administrator

Extract Attendance

Exam Officcer Flag Attendance

Delete User

Figure 3.1: Use case of the proposed system

Conceptual Design: The starting point of the design process is the specification of a conceptual
model. The target of this model is to enumerate the object classes of the domain, their attributes
and their relationships. The output of this stage is the Conceptual Class Schema, with the
notation specified in Unified Modelling Language. The Conceptual Class Schema shows the
underlying structure of the information that is going to be presented to the users, independently
of the presentation form. This schema has more relationship to the way the data will be stored
than to the way it will be presented.

Navigational Design: previous phases have produced, for each task, several scenarios, a use case
and a class diagram. Next, OOHDM describes a method to derive the navigational topology of
an application that supports each task. The main output of this stage is a navigational model that
is built over the conceptual model. This stage allows the creation of different models, according
to different user profiles. Each navigational model provides a subjective view of the conceptual
model. The output of this stage are nodes, links, access structures, navigational contexts and
navigational transformations.

Abstract Interface Design: In the Abstract Interface Design activity, the interface objects the
user will perceive is specified. It should be recognized that there is a distinction between
navigation operations and interface operations; not everything that happens in the interface is
navigation related. Furthermore, it is useful to design interfaces at an abstract level, to achieve,
among other things, independence of implementation environment. The Abstract Interface
Specification includes the way in which different navigational objects will look like, which
interface objects will activate navigation, the way in which multimedia interface objects will be
synchronized and which interface transformations will take place.

Implementation: In this phase, the designer will actually implement the design. Up to now, all
models were deliberately constructed in such a way as to be independent of the implementation
platform; in this phase the particular runtime environment is taken into account. When the
implementation phase is reached, the designer has already defined the information items that are
part of the problem domain. He also has identified how these items should be organized
according to the user’s profile and tasks; he has decided what the interface will look like, and
how it will behave. In order to implement all of this in the mobile environment, the designer has
to decide how the information items (both conceptual and navigation objects) will be stored. He
must also decide how the interface appearance and behaviour will be realized using HTML and
possibly use some extensions. At this stage, the actual appearance was defined by a graphics
design software, Photoshop.

3.3 Investigation and Analysis of the Present System

The current manual procedure of attendance taking and compilation represents the present
system. Lecture or class attendance is taken by passing paper across each student that is present
in the class. Each student writes a serial number, then the name, registration number and sign a
signature. Each student does this process till all the students in the class at that point in time have
signed attendance. On another occasion, an exercise book or register is populated beforehand
with names of all the member of a particular level in a department. Subsequently, the class
representative marks the name of all students who are present in a given lecture session. Another
way of taking the attendance is for the lecturer to call out the names of students in the class so
that they can answer either present or keep silent if the student is not in the class. Attendance
taking is important to every school, college and any other educational institute. It becomes
necessary in tertiary institutions as it is one of the requirements for being eligible for semester
examinations. One of the most important things to students to achieve academic success is also
one of the most basic which is going to school every day. By attending class regularly, students
are more likely to keep up with the daily lectures and assignments, and take quizzes and tests on
time. In both classroom settings and workplaces, attendance may be mandatory. Poor attendance
by a student in a class may affect their grades or other evaluations. This present system of result
processing has strengths and weaknesses that will be isolated in the sections that follow.

3.4 Strengths of the Present System

The new system has a valuable quality which is referred to as strengths and they are:

a. The manual result processing system is flexible unlike the automated which has to take
the predefined course without external interference.
b. High capital expenditure is not incurred in investing for an automated result processing
system.
c. Computer practical skill and knowledge is not necessary to process result in the current
system.
d. There is no procurement of hardwares to facilitate electronic processing.
e. The manual procedure does not replace staff, hence maintain the staff and their work
stations.

3.5 Weaknesses of the Present System

The present system has the following weaknesses:

a. The present system does not provide attendance history real-time to lecturers or the
university management through a medium that is not geographically limited.
b. The present system is not fool proof since a student can stand in for another student.
c. The response speed of the present system is slow compared to the automated system and
hence processing and information retrieval is slow.
d. The present system is redundant. There is also inconsistency in data entry, room for
errors, duplicate entering of information.
e. The present system does not support pictures that are valuable in verifying that the
student marked present is actually the one.
f. There is lack of security to attendance registers. Storage of result files takes lot of space.
g. Manual processing introduces the possibility of human error; workers that do not have
close attention to detail or that are suffering from a lack of concentration or fatigue may
make more errors.

3.6 Analysis of the Proposed System

The proposed system is a mobile application that is based on android. The application is also
extended to non-android platforms through a web browser. The application is used by lecturers
specially to take lecture session attendance. Here the system is an android application that
contains the picture of the class members of a given level in a given department. The application
presents the names serially according to registration numbers ascending. An interface is provided
for the lecturer to choose the target class. For each student, the application displays a light weight
photo of the student. The photos were optimized to make the application load faster. The lecture
calls out the mane of the person on the phone screen, student answers. The lecture sees the
student and verifies that it the same person one the picture. There are also two (2) buttons
situated at the bottom of the photo. The two buttons read ‘present’ and ‘absent’. When the
lecturer clicks present, the system will save present for the particular student. If there is silence,
the lecture will understand that the student being called did not come. At the end of each
semester, the application calculates the awarded to each student based on the attendance to
lecturers. With an automated system, there is no human error. When you manually track your
students’ time, your employees typically report their hours after they've worked them. This will
often increase the likelihood of inaccurate reporting. A student may not intend to misrepresent
his hours, he may just forget what his actual in and out times were. Or, if a lecturer has illegible
handwriting, it could make it difficult for payroll to determine actual hours worked. With manual
reporting, the department is basically relying on the book register. This system can be abused,
which can lead to presence theft.

3.7 Description of Input and Output Documents

As noted earlier in the analysis of the existing system, the proposed result processing system
must use data to process the class list of a particular level in a department. The input to the
system is a class list prepared as Microsoft Excel worksheet which has eleven (4) specific
columns consisting of serial numbers, names of students, registration numbers, passport
photograph. The format of the result is depicted in figure 3.3.

Figure 3.4: Input document for class list upload

These class list are uploaded on the webserver were it will be inserted into the class list database
by the mobile application. These class list are in turn retrieved on demand for attendance
purposes. The class lists are arranged according to faculty, department and level. Each name in
the class list are then manipulated by the proposed attendance processing system to give outputs.
The name of a student can be marked present or absent on a particular date. Therefore, before
proceeding with the attendance exercise, the lecturer will have to select the date of the
attendance. This will enable the system store the records according to dates. The department and
other information will be selected on the interface of the application. Really, when the lecturer
starts the attendance module, the class list will be populated in such a way that each student is
displayed on the page, one student at a time. The input interface the taking attendance is shown
in figure 3.5.
Figure 3.5: Input document for attendance taking.
Defensive programming was applied in the development of the application such that correction
will be automatically be made when a lecturer makes mistake in the upload. This format will
enable the mobile application to store the class lists and the attendance in such a way that it can
easily be retrieved, extracted and compiled for each individual course. The output document is
individual attendance record that contains the number of times a student attendance lectures for a
particular course for a given semester. A button is also provided for launching another output
document which is computation of the score awarded to each student for the number of times the
student attended the class for a given course. The output document that shows a sample
computation of attendance for a course. is shown in figure 3.6.

Figure 3.6: Output document for attendance score computation.

3.8 Specification and Design

Mathematical algorithm was developed for the proposed attendance system according to the
number of time a lecture in a particular course is held in a semester. Method for attendance score
computations is represented mathematically as:

10( number of ×the student attended the lecture)

X=
number of lectures held for that course∈the semester

The resulting number X is the score awarded to the student for that course.

3.9 High Level Model of the Proposed System

 Result Processing System

Login

Lecturer Administrator Exam Officer

Upload Class
Take attendace Add User
List

View
Delete User Edit Class List
attendance

View
attendance
Make Updates
View scores

View
Edit status
attendance

Figure 3.7: High level model of the new system

 CHAPTER FOUR

SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

4.1 Future of Academic Attendance System

Attendance Systems will continue to evolve in the future. They will provide a powerful cloud-
based solution for schools and higher education institutions to reduce staff workload and
improve efficiencies with automated time and attendance system. It will work to ensure
attendance is maintained by performing a cycle of activities that analyzes student absences, looks
for solutions to correct, set targets for improvement, seeks working interventions, and finally
assesses solutions. In the future, attendance systems will become highly automated and will help
schools and higher education in many ways. There is no doubt that an attendance management
system will help save time and money by eliminating a great deal of manual processes involved
in attendance and leave entry and calculating hours attended. With automatic class attendance
system, lecturers can more accurately and quickly track student’s time in the classroom.

Future attendance system may include features that will allow the lecture to calculate even to the
details the exact number of hours or minutes spend by a student in class. It will reduce
paperwork and save time and money with mobile and cloud-based attendance management
system. It will eliminate duplicate data entry and errors in time and attendance entries. It will
improve visibility to track and manage student attendance and absenteeism across multiple
campuses. It will automatically calculate the attendance score of each student. In the future
attendance systems will incorporate biometric feature more neatly. It will track the attendance of
teachers and staff, assign work and manage allocation. It will also keep the parents informed
about the student’s performance via Email and SMS alerts. It will auto-generate various types of
reports of class or student attendance. It will have increased security and confidentiality with
role-based permissions to users.

4.2 Summary

This paper is aimed at discussing an android application for taking lecture attendance in
Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University. More so, the application gives attendance score
based on the number of times a student attended lectures for a given course. The application also
allows the lectures and the management to retrieve information as at when due. The mobile
application and its web area is written with web programming, scripting and formatting
languages such as HTML, CSS, php, JavaScript. On the other hand, the android application was
developed with hybrid mobile application development tools such as Cordova, HTML5, CSS3,
JQuery, CodeIgniter php web framework. MySQL was used at the back end. The mobile
application features a class list upload module. The android application is reserved for
convenient and quick use for lecturers. The system allows all who are involved in attendance
computation to work independently to yield desired results. Exam officers of school management
upload class lists in the server. Lecturers take the attendance with the class lists and saves in the
server. Administrator comes into play in exceptional cases where modifications need to be done
on certain class lists and users. Since the android application employs web elements, it was
approached with the Object-Oriented Hypermedia and Design Methodology. We made a critical
research of existing attendance processing systems. Research was also conducted in photo cards
and biometric models that are already existing. These researches help to identify areas to work
on. Taking a deep look at related work in this context brought increase understanding to what
have been in existence and helped the researcher to add to the body of knowledge by including
photo card to the application. The existing systems were analyzed, the limitations of the existing
systems were taken note of and the new system was developed to overcome the limitations of the
new system. The system was developed and tested on android emulators and real android phones
and tablets. The application is working and it met the users’ requirements.

4.3 Conclusion

Attendance taking is important to every school, college and any other educational institute. It
becomes necessary in tertiary institutions as it is one of the requirements for being eligible for
semester examinations. One of the most important things to students to achieve academic success
is also one of the most basic which is going to school every day. Attendance, class attendance
and lecture attendance are terms that are used to depict a process in which an instructor records
the names of students who attended a particular lesson, lecture or any educational session. This
process is usually done as part of a continuous assessment that precedes examination. Students
are expected to attend classes regularly. Classroom attendance is often one of the most necessary
and important means of learning and, in many classes, is essential to the educational objectives
of a given course. traditional process of taking student’s attendance is time consuming and takes
too much effort specially to record and to maintain it. Lecturers are required to callout the names
of each student one by one and this process would consume time especially for a large class.
Another method is to distribute an attendance sheet where students can check their credentials
and sign it. However, this method is not fool proof as students can be dishonest by signing on
their friends’ behalf. In general, the manual or traditional way in recording attendance is usually
time consuming and may distract the teaching exercise. Since traditional attendance system uses
pen and paper, registers are stored and maintained.

4.4 Recommendations

Here are the recommendations for this work:

 This proposed new system is recommended to primarily to Chukwuemeka Odumegwu

Ojukwu University for attendance taking in the institution.
 This work is also recommended to secondary schools that wish to automate their
attendance processing in their schools.
 The software is recommended for research student for academic purposes and future
improvement. A researcher can review this work as a stepping stone for further research.
attendance processing is evolving, hence more features can be integrated into it to make
is more productive and desirable.
 The software is recommended for use in tertiary institutions by both lecturers and
administrative staff. Lecturers can use this application to keep track of their students’
commitments on academic affairs in the institution. Lectures can use it to be informed
about students under their care so as to know how to make them improve.
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[1] Arulogu, O. T., Olatunbosun, A., Fakolujo O. A., and Olaniyi, O. M.,

“RFID-Based Students Attendance Management System,” International

Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Vol. 4, Issue 2 (2013).

[2] Shukla, S., Shah, S., and Save, P., “RFID Based Attendance Management

System,” International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering,

Vol. 3, No. 6 (2013), pp. 784–790.

[3] Al-Barhamtoshy, H.M., Altalhi, A.H., and Mashat, A.S., “Automation

of Attendances in Classrooms using RFID,” International Journal of

Scientific & Engineering Research, Vol. 5, Issue 2 (2014).

[4] Noguchi, S., Niibori, M., Zhou, E., and Kamada, M., “Student Atten-

dance Management System with Bluetooth Low Energy Beacon and

Android Devices,” NBIS, 2015, 2015 18th International Conference

on Network-Based Information Systems (NBiS), 2015 18th Interna-

tional Conference on Network-Based Information Systems (NBiS) 2015,

pp. 710–713.

[5] Bae, M. Y., and Cho, D. J., “Design and Implementation of Automatic

Attendance Check System Using BLE Beacon,” International Journal

of Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering, Vol. 10, No. 10 (2015),

pp. 177–186

[6] Thein, M. M. M., Tun, C. M. N. H. M, “Students’ Attendance Manage-

ment System On RFID And Fingerprint Reder,” International Journal of

Scientific & Technology Resarch,, Vol. 4, Issue 7 (2015), pp. 30–37.

[7] YuXiang, S., Cha, Y. W., and Kim, C. H., “Comparison and Performance

Analysis of App and Web-based One-stop Attendance Management,”

International Journal of u- and e- Service, Science and Technology Vol.