DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF ATTENDANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

1.1 Introduction

An attendance monitoring system is a software developed for daily student attendance in schools and institutions. It facilitates access to the attendance of a particular student in a particular class. Biometric is a field of technology that uses automated methods for identifying and verifying a person based on physiological and behavioral traits. Because some parts of the human body is use in biometrics, the issue of getting lost is not possible and for password to be easily guess can be easily avoided. Also, utilizing biometrics in most cases can be said to be more efficient when speed is considered and convenient than employing password and ID cards method. This system will also help in generating reports and evaluating the attendance eligibility of a student. Rather than signing an attendance sheet, individuals will pass their thumb over the fingerprint scanner, the finger print is compared against a list of pre-registered users, and once a match is made, the individual will be registered as having attended that lecture.

As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.

1.2 Background of Study

Attendance management of students in institution can be rigorous using the conventional method of paper sheets and old file system method. Every academic institution poses some standards concerning how attendance is to be confirmed for student in classes, laboratory sessions and examination halls. That is why keeping the accurate record of attendance is very important. The approach of using paper sheets and the old file system to confirmed students has been in use for years. There are so many bottlenecks with the conventional method, one of such problem is the difficulty for the management to compute the percentage of student attendance in classes and frequently modify their information. Also in institution, tracking and monitoring student time of attendance could be tedious task, time consuming and as well prone to errors. As an alternative to traditional manual clocking process by students in classes or during examination, biometrics characteristics can be used for authenticating students. This research will focus on developing Fingerprint based Biometric Student Attendance Monitoring System.

The fingerprint Biometrics is adopted in this research work for the fact it is one of the most successful applications of biometric technology. In the manual signing processes, where lecturer give a sheet of paper to student to write their names and signature as a form of confirming their presence for a particular class session, falsification in student attendance mostly occur a situation where by a student can sign on behalf of his or her colleague as being present in the class when not true can be so difficult to prevent from happening especially for large classes where row count can takes longer time International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security (2009).

The trending concern in this modern world is regarding national security, identifying theft as well as on-line terrorism. Researcher refers to Biometric as a solution for detecting user’s identity and security challenges emanating in this modern day. Biometric identification is any automatically measurable, robust and distinctive physical characteristic or personal trait that can be used to identify an individual or verify the claimed identify of an individual. Biometric science utilizes the measurements of a person’s behavioral characteristics (keyboard strokes, mouse movement) or biological characteristics (fingerprint, iris, nose, eyes, jaw, voice pattern, etc). It is the features captures that is being transformed digitally into a template. The recognition software can then be use to discover an individual as the person they claim to be. Fingerprint recognition is the most common biometric method adopted in identification of a person (Ismail 2009).

Using a particular person fingerprint as a form of authentication is just like using natural physical data as a password. The benefit of using biometric authentication is that it is absolutely distinct to each person. There are no two different individuals with the same fingerprint, it is difficult and impossible for one another to have the same fingerprint, and fingerprints from different people can never be the same. Also, a fingerprint can never be guess by a criminal, such as a password which imposter can easily predict using a user birth date or any other common password. Infiltration is very hard to come by due to the fact that criminal will not be able to snoop around to steal user password when using ATM with the 4-digit pass code (Valasquez 2013).

Fingerprint can be categorize as one of the most mature biometric traits and is accepted in courts of law as a legitimate proof of evidence. Fingerprints are adopted in forensic analysis globally in investigations of criminal. More recently, there are growing numbers of individuals and commercial users that are currently using or strongly putting into consideration of using fingerprint-based identification for no any other reason other than the matching performance biometric technology has demonstrated as well as a better understanding of fingerprints.

Although there are so many positive impacts for using biometric authentication, however, unlike username and password, biometric data is a physical feature of a person that is fixed and cannot be change. If a person could have access to adequate scan another person fingerprint, that scan has the capability to trick the Touch ID system. In that case, the fingerprint features of a person can’t be change consequently a criminal can’t be prevented from having access to your personal information or files. As fingerprint scanning becomes more widely accepted anywhere anytime, this may become a substantial challenge. A criminal can have access to different accounts because with one fingerprint, a criminal may have access to multiple accounts that implemented authentication using fingerprint.

1.3 Statement of the Problem

Investigation revealed that the traditional system is still mostly used in lecture room or laboratory session in most institution today. Lecturer or instructor will give out a sheet of paper containing list of student’s name to sign or in some cases, the student will be the ones to write their names, student id and matriculation number to indicate their presence for a particular class. Falsification in student attendance does occur rampantly in the traditional method.

In other to prevent this problem, it is necessary to develop an Authentication System for Students using fingerprint Biometric recognition that will be employed to track and keep the attendance of every student in a particular class. Fingerprint is unique feature for everyone compare to using barcode in smart cards. Therefore, this system designed in this project work is not based on the existing barcode system. Tracking and monitoring student time of attendance could be tedious, time consuming and more susceptible to errors.

The security of the existing attendance system that are now use in classroom (signature system) can be easily compromised. Some students can master other student’s signature. Thereby, helping their colleague who are absent for a particular class to sign the attendance sheet using the duplicated signature. The Fingerprint Attendance monitoring system designed in this research work for student is a more secure platform where students mark their attendance with their fingerprint.

1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study

The aim of the study is to design and develop a reliable, scalable and cost-effective Fingerprint based Student Attendance Management system. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:

1. To develop a fingerprint students’ attendance capturing system and compare it with manual system;
2. To develop a software to store students’ database and attendance records;
3. To carry out the analysis of manual processes involved in class attendance and examination attendance;
4. To design a new system for the (i) above; and
5. To implement the design using Web Based programming languages such as; HTML, CSS, JAVASCRIPT, and PHP.

1.5 Significance of the Study

The System for Students using fingerprint Biometric will eliminate the use of paper in manual signing processes and all the risk associated with it. One of the risks of using a paper in class attendance is that it can be easily misplaced and students cheat by signing for each other not present in the class thereby defeating the aim of taking the attendance. Tracking and monitoring students’ time of attendance could be tedious, time-consuming and susceptible to error. Thus, the System will drastically reduce the time needed to verify attendance data.

The System also allows the institution management to track or investigate student class attendance in a particular course having poor attendance thereby enabling the management to rectify the situation by providing the necessary interventions. The system provides high level of security whereby making it impossible for imposters and impersonators in making their ways to examination halls. The System using fingerprint Biometric will keep historical data making it easy for lecturers to access and grade students.

Fingerprint Based Student Attendance Management System is extremely useful in institutions especially during classes, tutorials, laboratory sessions and examination during which heavy security are normally deployed to validate student’s identity in order to cob imposters, with the use of Authentication System the number of security personnel will be greatly reduced. Most lecturers’ handout sheet of paper for their class attendance, which can easily be misplaced or damaged and poses a lot of stress in cumulating grades for their students.

The system allows the lecturer to monitor each student attendance, track down truants and take the appropriate action. Thus, the system eliminates all these downsides. The Authentication system is not only useful to the institutions and lecturers alone, even the students benefit a great deal by reducing the stress in queuing up which result in delay and often time in the damage of the attendance sheet. It also prevents mistakes and anomaly that is associated with manual signing in which student that attend a class is marked as not present thereby losing the mark accorded to the particular attendance due to multiple attendance sheets.

1.6 Scope of the Study

The scope of this research is to Design and Implementation of Attendance Management System. The system will be a window based application developed using Web Based programming languages such as; HTML, CSS, JAVASCRIPT, and PHP as the preferred programming language for building the user interface and MySQL for database design. It does not cover other aspects of biometric. The software will be integrated with a fingerprint Hardware designed with Arduino.

1.7 Limitations of the Study

During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:

1. Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
2. Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this institution to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
3. Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
4. Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
5. Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).

1.8 Operational Definition of Terms

Biometrics: Is physiological or behavioral characteristics unique to individuals, this Include Fingerprint, hand geometry, handwriting, iris, retinal, vein, and voice.

PIN: Personal Identification Number.

Biometric Verification: Is any means by which a person can be uniquely identified by evaluating one or more distinguishing biological traits.