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Source: Conference proceedings of »eLearning and Software for Education« (eLSE)

Conference proceedings of »eLearning and Software for Education« (eLSE)

Location: Romania
Author(s): Siti Nazleen Abdul Rabu
Title: The Design and Implementation of Student Attendance Tracking System Using QR Code
Card
The Design and Implementation of Student Attendance Tracking System Using QR Code
Card
Issue: 03/2019
Citation Siti Nazleen Abdul Rabu. "The Design and Implementation of Student Attendance Tracking
style: System Using QR Code Card". Conference proceedings of »eLearning and Software for
Education« (eLSE) 03:154-161.
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=783262
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The 14th International Scientific Conference

eLearning and Software for Education
Bucharest, April 19-20, 2018
10.12753/2066-026X-18-158

The Design and Implementation of Student Attendance Tracking System

Using QR Code Card

Siti Nazleen ABDUL RABU

Centre for Instructional Technology and Multimedia, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia
[email protected]

Abstract: In institutions of higher learning, the attendance of students to the class is directly related to
their academic performance. However, the record-keeping of most student attendance is still performed
conventionally, which is tedious and time consuming, especially that involve large classroom. Higher
education institutions in Malaysia are now encouraged to explore the potential use of Quick Response
(QR) code and smartphone as a future attendance management system to track and record the student's
attendance to the class and tutorial. In response, this study attempts to explain the design and
implementation of a proposed system developed using Google Drive, Google Form, Google Sheet,
Notepad, and QR Code Generator Add-ons in Google Sheet. Students were required to scan the unique
QR code assigned to them using their smartphone during or at the beginning of each lecture in order to
confirm their attendance. This affordable QR code-based attendance system enables lecturers to speed
up the process of taking attendance, especially in a large classroom and would save them valuable
teaching time. The proposed system provides better security than the conventional methods that depend
on the sign-in sheet or roll calling student names including eliminating chances of students signing up
for others who may not be present. In addition, it also provides a faster and simpler way to take
attendance, which could be easily adopted by lecturers to facilitate the process of taking, managing and
keeping the record of students’ attendance.

Keywords: Online discussion forum; Systematic review.

I. INTRODUCTION

Quick Response (QR) code is an emerging and popular technology. Not only that QR code has
been successfully applied in mobile payment services, digital content download, website quick links,
and many other applications, educational institutions also have been looking for ways to enhance the
educational process using the latest technologies such as QR code. The QR code can actually be
utilized to take students’ attendance in class. If done manually, taking and tracking students’
attendance can be tedious and time-consuming, especially for the classroom will a large number of
students. Moreover, the time taken by lecturers to take attendance may be viewed sometimes as a
waste of the lecture time. A lot of universities want to monitor students’ attendance but very few are
doing so in an effective manner. Among the common ways of taking attendance are through roll
calling student names and a sign-in sheet. However, these methods are time-consuming and ineffective
in preventing students from signing up attendance on behalf of their absence friends. Moreover,
information gathered can easily be lost as records of students’ attendance are poorly kept. This is,
however, the methods adopted by some universities and many other institutions. As good attendance
usually leads to good performance and vice versa, a faster system is essential to facilitate the process
of taking attendance with the aim of improving performance. Class attendance has been proven not
only to ensure regular participation in classes but also may boost students’ performance and increase
their chances of getting higher test grades on examination [1]. This, therefore, creates the need to
create a system that would serve as a motivation for students to come to class and to ease the lecturers’

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process of attendance taking and tracking in order to speed up the process of taking attendance and
would save lecturers’ valuable teaching time.

II. RELATED WORKS

As more universities understand the importance and usefulness of class attendance, many
applications have been built to make the task easier. Apart from the traditional methods (i.e. roll
calling or sign-in sheets) which are mostly done manually on paper, barcodes scanners, image
detectors or Bluetooth are the other methods adopted by some universities and many other institutions
to successfully complete the task of taking attendance [2]. There are quite a number of previous
researches from the field of computer science developed students’ attendance tracking system to
improve record taking in class using different technologies. For example, RFID (radio frequency
identification) [3], fingerprint [4], Bluetooth technology [5], and near field communication (NFC)
technology [6]. However, these methods are usually expensive and require additional cost and
equipment, such as fingerprint reader, RFID tags and RFID reader. Thus, very few universities in the
Malaysian context are making use of these management systems and tools. Another approach to
implement the students’ attendance tracking system is using QR code [7] including google forms and
google sheets [5] which are more convenient to be adopted by lecturers with no technical and
computer programming skills required. The development of an attendance management system should
be simple, fast, reliable and user-friendly which can be followed and adopted by many lecturers. The
method used should be easy to apply and quick in recording attendance during a class session. This
study focuses on creating a simple student attendance tracking system that can be used to take
attendance which is both fast and affordable in comparison to the other methods.

III. QR CODE

Quick response (QR) code is a two-dimensional bar code that was first designed by the
Japanese automotive industry company Denso Wave in 1994. The code that consists of black square
dots is capable of storing various types of data (e.g. numeric and alphabetic characters, kanji, kana,
hiragana, symbols, binary, and control codes). Additionally, a QR code can store a maximum of 7,089
characters in one symbol [8]. This code is scanned in two directions that are vertical as well as
horizontal. A QR code can be read by almost all mobile phones. The QR code is often used in a
number of fields, for instance in newspapers, magazines, journals, websites, advertisement, and
business advertisement board, restaurants, clothes stores, and many more to store websites addresses,
content information and miscellaneous data. For instance, the QR code is used in advertisements to
guide people to visit their websites in the business world. The QR code is also being located on e.g.
stickers, booths, business cards, and advertisement vehicle. Due to its fast readability and greater
storage capacity, the QR code has recently become popular in education.

IV. THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

This section describes the various tools and techniques used in creating an attendance tracking
system that utilized QR code and smartphones which was actually inspired by two Youtube videos
(https://goo.gl/7GvvG2) and (https://goo.gl/UrZbnu). This study was implemented to 204 second year
undergraduate students enrolled in PGT201E Instructional Technology Practices course. The process
of generating 204 unique QR code attendance cards involved the use of Google Drive, Google Form,
Google Sheet, Notepad, and QR code Generator Add-ons in Google Sheet. Each student was assigned
with one QR code card as their course identity card for attendance taking. The QR codes (embedded
with students’ name and matric number) were mainly used to provide the students with immediate
access to Google Form. They were first required to install any QR code scanner available in the Play

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Store or App Store. Once they scanned their QR code card using their smartphone, their matric number
and name were automatically entered into the Google Form for the attendance recording. Students
were not required to type in their particulars into the Google Form. Guideline on generating this
student attendance tracking system using QR code card will be explained in the next section to guide
educators in developing this affordable application.
4.1 Step 1: Creating a Google Form
The first step is to login into the Google account to access Google Drive. Create and name a
folder as QR code attendance. Next, the lecturer needs to download the student list that consists of
students’ name and matric number registered in that particular course. For each semester, lecturers
normally can download students’ name list (in Microsoft Excel format) that enrolled in his course from
the university’s Learning Management System (LMS). For this study, a name list of 204 students
registered in the Instructional Technology Practices course was accessed from the Moodle campus
online LMS platform. Next, a Google Form was created in the Google Drive folder. The information
should include course name, student matric number and student name as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Google form preview

4.2 Step 2: Generating the pre-filled link and pasting the link into Notepad
At this step, the lecturer needs to (1) click on the “3-Dots” icon at the top left corner of the
Google Form editor, and (2) click on the “Get Pre-Filled Link”. A new browser tab will open showing
the Pre-Filled Link Form. Next, open the downloaded excel student list and copy any student matric
number from the list (e.g 132205), (3) paste the student ID to the Pre-Filled Link Form, and (4) click
“Get Link”. Copy the Pre-Filled link URL, and (5) paste it into Notepad. Repeat the process with
another student’s matric number as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Generating the pre-filled link and pasting the link into Notepad

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4.3 Step 3: Generating the Response Link

Still working in the notepad, (1) replace the string “viewform” to “formResponse”. Next, copy
the new link and paste it into a browser tab. The browser will show the Google Form submitted page,
stating that (2) “Your response has been recorded”. Next, click on the “Response” tab in the Form
Editor to view the submitted responses from the generated response link, and (3) click on the Google
Sheet icon to generate the spreadsheet for the responses. The spreadsheet will show the (4) student’s
matric number and the timestamp as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Generating the response link

4.4 Step 4: Generating the Mass-response Link via Spreadsheet

To generate 204 response links, in the Google spreadsheet, add a new tab worksheet. Rename
it as “Response Link”. Open the excel file that contains the students' name list and matric number.
Copy this information into the Response link worksheet. In the Response link worksheet, insert a new
column and name the column “Generic URL”. Go back to the Notepad and copy the Generic URL
from the response link created earlier. Create another column, name it as Response Link. This is where
a unique Response Link from each student will be created. Enter a formula that will combine the
Generic URL with the student’s matric number, generating a unique response link for each student.
Copy the formula to the rest of the rows by dragging it downward as shown in Figure 4.

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Figure 4. Generating the mass-response link for each student

4.5 Step 5: Generating the QR Codes

To generate the 204 QR codes, lecturer needs to get and install the (1) Add-ons for Google
Sheets as shown in Figure 5. Search for QR code Generator and install it. Select (2) column “Response
Link” and “Name”, and apply the QR code Generator to these cells by selecting (3) Add-ons > QR
Code Generator > Start. Apply tick on: save as document, draw border, save as PNG, use second
column. Finally, click Generate and wait for the (4) QR codes to be generated into Google Docs (with
borders, matric number & names) saved in the Google Drive.

Figure 5. Generating the QR Codes

4.6 Step 6: Share the Docs & Images with Students

The lecturer can then distribute the Google Docs that consist of QR code images (with
borders, matric numbers & names) to their students as shown in Figure 6. The QR code is just a
shortcut to a Google Form. Hence, scanning the code is the same as visiting the website of the form,
inserting matric number and name, and hitting "Submit" except it all gets done in one step. For this
study, the 204 QR code cards were attached in the Instructional Technology Practises course Facebook
group to be distributed to students as shown in Figure 7. Students were required to identify their QR
code card, print it and cut it out their own QR code identity attendance card. To avoid losing the card,
students were advised to attach their QR code card in their student card lanyard. To make it more

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interesting, lecturer can also custom made the QR code card according to their creativity as shown in
Figure 8.

Figure 6. Student’s QR code card (with border, matric number & name)

Figure 7. The QR code images distribution through a Facebook group

Figure 8. Custom made student’s QR code card

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4.7 Step 7: Implementation in Class

In class, during the attendance taking session, lecturer ensured that the wifi or mobile network
must be connected to students’ mobile phone. Lecturers can determine at what time they want to take
the attendance, either at the beginning of the learning session or in the middle or even towards the end
of the learning session. Once ready, lecturer then projected the Google Form on the projector screen
and (1) changed the default setting in the Responses tab in Google Form, from “Not accepting
responses” to “Accepting responses” as shown in Figure 9. Students would be allowed and instructed
to (2) scan their QR code card with their smartphone to confirm their attendance. Students were able to
simultaneously scan their QR code. The number of responses was automatically (3) shown on the
screen with students' name and matric number. Based on the duration preferences, lecturers can stop
accepting responses and the attendance records will be stored into Google spreadsheet where the
lecturers could access at their own convenience. Thus, this system generates an immediate report for
viewing so that lecturers can follow up on absent students.

Figure 9. The attendance taking session

V. CONCLUSIONS

This paper describes a proposed system that incorporates QR codes and smartphones in taking
students’ attendance. This study shows that the QR code, a multi-faceted and popular feature of smart
devices, can be used as an efficient method of taking attendance, replacing the more antiquated,
traditional way of roll calling in class. This affordable QR code-based attendance system enables
lecturers to speed up the process of taking attendance, especially in a large classroom and would save
them valuable teaching time. The proposed system provides better security than the traditional
methods that depend on the sign-in sheet or roll calling student names, including eliminating chances
of students signing up for others who may not be present. In addition, it also provides a faster and
simpler way to take attendance, which could be easily adopted by lecturers to facilitate the process of
taking, managing and keeping the record of students' attendance. Moreover, the system prevents

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signature forgery amongst students, thus ensuring a more reliable record. In the future, it will be
important to explore the potential use of technology acceptance theory as a theoretical framework to
examine the determinants associated with university lecturers’ and students’ behavioural intention to
use the QR code as an attendance taking and tracking tool. The acceptance of QR code by students and
educators is critical to the successful implementation of this technology. Therefore, it is important to
understand the factors that affect student and lecturer intentions to use the QR code for this purpose.
This kind of research will provide useful information in understanding the drivers of acceptance for
QR code-based attendance system.

Reference Text and Citations

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Systems, 2015, pp. 710–713.
[3] M. A. Abas, T. B. Tuck, and M. Dahlui, “Attendance Management System (AMS) with fast track analysis,” in 2014
International Conference on Computer, Control, Informatics and Its Applications (IC3INA), 2014, pp. 35–40.
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