Automated teachers' classroom attendance monitoring system.

Abstract

The Automated Teachers' Classroom Attendance Monitoring System is designed specially to provide the school management team with proof of teachers' classroom attendances and performance. In Uganda, a teacher's presence in the classroom is an important prerequisite for learning to take place. Teachers play vital roles in the lives of the learners and therefore best known for classroom interactions with the learners and delivery of content. In fact, teachers set the tone of their classrooms, build a warm environment, mentor and nurture learners, become role models, and listen and look for signs of trouble in the student to inform their teaching and mentorship of the learners. This greatly helps the learners to grow mentally, intellectually, financially in the world of knowledge and also to broaden on their horizon towards life. However, teachers in Uganda often tend to be absent from the classrooms, thus disrupting the students learning and mentorship process. There is need for a closer and full monitoring of the entire teachers' classroom delivery and interaction with the learners. However, existing teacher classroom attendance monitoring systems in Uganda lacks the component of full monitoring of teachers' classroom attendance except in rare instances where inspector/administrators sit the full length of the lesson to invigilate the teachers' classroom delivery. This study identified various challenges to lack of a proper teachers' classroom attendance monitoring system, Including, wastage of the parent's finances (money paid as school fees for the student), demoralization of the school organizational culture (timetable) and wastage of the school facilities among others. To solve the challenges, the study developed an Automated Teachers' Classroom Attendance Monitoring System with an aim to monitor and provide full proof of the teachers' classroom attendances. The developed system provides three major functionalities. One, the system records teachers' attendance through a fingerprint scanner that detects registered users and records their attendance in the system database. Two, a login interface for the system administrator and the management team to access summary information of teachers' attendance. Three, automated random recording of video clips of the teaching session. Results of the testing and validation show that the system performs the above mention functionalities, Therefore, it is anticipated that the system will reduce cases of teachers' absenteeism in schools that may adopt it.