IBAtS - Image Based Attendance System: A Low Cost Solution to Record Student Attendance in a Classroom

Conventional practices for recording student attendance in a classroom, such as roll-call and sign-in-sheet, are proven to be inefficient in terms of time and staff-workload. In addition, they are also prone to human error and bogus attendance, which introduce inaccuracy in the recorded data. A number of studies have been conducted to improve the way we record class attendance. However, some of the proposed solutions are costly and impractical. Most solutions also fail to address bogus attendance. This paper presents a low cost solution in recording student attendance. Attendance is recorded on class photographs, students' faces are automatically located using a face detection technique, and students then registered their attendance by simply identifying their face on the records. Mobile applications were developed for both students and lecturers as the primary interfaces to interact with the system.