Elsevier

Expert Systems with Applications

Volume 40, Issue 11, 1 September 2013, Pages 4478-4489
Expert Systems with Applications

Control of attendance applied in higher education through mobile NFC technologies

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2013.01.041Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper presents an improved attendance control system, required for continuous evaluation which has become compulsory following the Bologna Process. It provides a solution based on NFC technology and is based on a real project developed and pilot tested at the “Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, Campus Madrid”.

Highlights

► Here is an expert system to reduce the efforts by the teacher in the Bologna Process. ► After a study of different solutions we implements NFC Smartphones to help them. ► NFC technologies shows an excellent behavior in the case of study using web services. ► The results show professors and students satisfied with the prototype.

Introduction

In 1999 the education ministers of various European Union countries signed the Bologna Declaration, a joint statement that initiated a convergence process with the aim of facilitating the exchange of graduates and adapting the content of university studies to social demands, improving their quality and competitiveness through greater transparency and student-based learning quantified through the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS).

The most important reform was the creation of a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) that would be competitive and attractive for students and teachers as well as for third countries. The document set as its main element the unification of teaching disciplines, creating the “academic-euro” materialized in a common academic value for those who adhere to the process, i.e. the ECTS credit, which was borrowed from the previous experience in the “Erasmus Programme” (European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students).

The whole educational reform process initiated in 1999 is known as the Bologna Process and it consists in providing the student with a challenging educational experience that will allow him to achieve proficiency in all aspects of the person:

  • Knowledge.

  • Know how (Competence).

  • Knowing how to be (Attitude).

The most substantial changes that will take place can be summarized into three main groups:

  • The curricular adaptations.

  • The technological adaptations.

  • The financial reforms needed to create a Knowledge Society.

From the academic point of view it also brings a change in the way to assess the knowledge and skills acquired by the student. EHEA involves the introduction of new teaching methods, to the detriment of traditional lectures:

  • Continuous evaluation: Daily monitoring of students personal work by ongoing assessment. Three main tools are proposed for continuous evaluation: the use of all the possibilities offered by the Internet, the New Information and Communication Technologies (NICT) (Susana et al., 2011) and personal tutoring.

  • Practice teaching: Active student involvement through exercises, group work, internships, etc.

Many higher education institutions, when implementing continuous evaluation methodology, return to practices like mandatory attendance.

This methodology involves a percentage of the teaching hours being allocated to check attendance, resulting in a reduction in actual teaching time and quality of education for the institution that implements it.

To eliminate this drawback, inspired in one of the basic ideas of the Bologna Process, namely to adapt technology to provide a better quality of education that will allow us to better prepare the next generation, arises the “Assistance Control” project. This project (Spanish students to register for classes with NFC, 2012), carried out during the academic year 2011–2012 at “Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, Campus Madrid” (UPSAM), and directed by professor Sergio Ríos, and developed by seven students that carried it out as Final Degree Project, in collaboration with Samsung Electronics Iberia, allowed the senior students at the School of Computer Engineering to certify attendance to ensure continuous assessment without instructional time allocated to this activity.

Section snippets

Statement of the problem

The project is targeted at educational institutions implementing the methodology stipulated by the Bologna Process, and therefore at any educational institution in the European Union, and it aims to eliminate the need to devote a part of teaching time to control of attendance.

Before this pioneering project existed, those institutions that had implemented attendance control had left its implementation in the hands of the teacher, this originating various problems, such as:

  • The institutions give

Technological resources

Low-cost technology was a requirement for the project, to allow the educational institution to provide all students with it, or to take advantage of technology the students may already be in possession of, or may acquire themselves. It should be a secure technology, additionally, which would reduce insofar as possible, any attempt at data manipulation.

In order to expedite signing-in, the technology employed had to be fast as far as communications is concerned or allow multiple simultaneous

Successful NFC cases

As already indicated NFC technology is fashionable today, and is experimenting rapid expansion throughout Europe, its use being promoted by mayor communication companies that view NFC as the gateway to a broad range of possible untapped markets.

One of the projects that is most heard about is that of providing Smartphone with new features, such as credit card functionality, for which NFC technology has been chosen for security. According to recent studies this feature would be welcomed by users

Development of research

Initially, the scenario was for every classroom to be equipped with an active device (María Victoria, Pablo Pavón, & Alfonso, 2011), through which students, bringing their mobile device (Smartphone or tablet) close enough (or an NFC tag supplied by the educational center), could sign-in. But for the purpose of developing a more innovative project, it was later decided that signing-in would only be made by way of a mobile device, making it unnecessary for the device in the classroom to be an

Results and discussion

The attendance control NFC pilot project was the first of its kind, although it is true that the University of Arizona conducted in mid-2011, a similar pilot project in which NFC equipped Smartphones were used to control access to different areas in their facilities.

Our pilot project took place in the second semester of the academic year 2011–2012, when Smartphones provided by Samsung were distributed to final year students of the Higher School of Engineering at the UPSAM, who were responsible

Conclusions and future work

The project is practical and brings benefits to both educational centers as the student community, resulting in greater control from the educational institution and teachers, with less burdens and obligations for the latter and more information for the students, who additionally receive higher quality teaching with a clear increase in actual teaching time, as shown in Table 6. It can be seen that in educational institution in which our project is implemented, the teacher need not perform a roll

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