DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF STUDENT ATTENDANCE RECORD SYSTEM
Abstract.
This project aims at designing a student attendance system which could effectively manage attendance of students at the University. Attendance is marked after student identification. For student identification, a fingerprint recognition-based identification system is used. Fingerprints are considered to be the best and fastest method for biometric identification. They are secure to use, unique for every person and does not change in one’s lifetime. Fingerprint recognition is a mature field today, but still identifying individual from a set of enrolled fingerprints is a time taking process. It was our responsibility to improve the fingerprint identification system for implementation on large databases e.g. of an institute or a country etc. In this project, many new algorithms have been used e.g. gender estimation, key based one to many matchings, removing boundary minutiae. Using these new algorithms, we have developed an identification system which is faster in implementation than any other available today in the market. Although we are using this fingerprint identification system for student identification purpose in our project, the matching results are so good that it could perform very well on large databases like that of a country like Nigeria. This system was implemented in Java and MySQL for storing data.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the 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 used 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).
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 are 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.
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 guessed 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 categorized 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 changed, 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.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
Throughout the class year, the lecturer only gets record and evaluate the students through a piece of attendance sheet. This leaves gap for impersonation and student sometimes record earlier time when they are late. This method is old and not accurate as some students do not go to class rather, they ask a colleague to sign in for them and they easily get away with not coming to the class. Due to the large number of civil servants in the ministry, it is very difficult to keep track of the attendance of each classer. Besides if any damage should happen to the attendance papers, everything will be lost.
The attendance books used over the years are stored in a file room and this is no longer a modern way of storing data. It also makes it very difficult to retrieve a particular students attendance record. The proposed system is going to solve this problem by using Radio Frequency Identification technology. RFID is an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using the RFID tags. Normally, the RFID comprises of two main parts& the RFID reader and the RFID tag.
1.3 Objectives of the Study
This project is aimed at developing a computerized student attendance system that uniquely identify a person in a secure way. The system will store students- basic information and also monitor their attendance to class. In achieving the general objectives, this research class will specifically concentrate on achieving the following specific objectives
• To develop a database that will store students- records and basic information.
• To include a biometric fingerprint feature into the system for authentication and security purposes.
• Design and develop an attendance Management System in the public sector, specifically Anambra State University to replace their current manual type.
• To monitor and generate attendance reports on the students at certain stages of class (weekly, monthly or annually).
1.4 Motivation of the Study
Educational institutions still use attendance registers for managing student attendances. The teacher has to call out names during the lecture time. Increased number of students causes wastage of reasonable amount of time from the valuable lecture time. To save this time, some teachers follow the method of marking attendance by signing on a paper which is passed to the class during the lecture time. Here there is a chance of cheating by the students by putting signature of a absent person. These issues motivate the design of a new system.
1.5 Scope of the Study
The project scope of this project is to develop a hybrid student attendance management system through the fingerprint scanning. In this project, desktop-based student attendance system will be developed for a purpose just to obtain the fingerprint of student. In addition, the system will be developed to display the attendance status/condition of every student, generate reports related to the student attendance, and etc. Next, the student attendance management system will only be developed for managing the student attendance status and allow lecturers to easily analyze the information regarding the student attendance. So at the end of the project, a system will be developed which used for record the attendance of students more efficiently and effectively through the fingerprint scanning.
1.6 Significance of the Study
The use of student attendance system is very important because of human being proneness to error, leaving the student to write down their names might not be accurate as student can even write attendance for their fellow student and their handwriting legibility can be a case when compiling the attendance record at the end of the month.
The official in charge of attendance collation is highly favored by this system because use of pen and paper as a means of collating student attendance will leave the official in charge with numerous sheets of paper, which will be hectic as he/she have to start comparing several sheets to record the average attendance for just a student. The official is going to waste a lot of time compiling the attendance percentage at the end of the month, mistake can creep in due to the large volumes of papers
Successful implementation of this project means the student attendance credibility can be queried or put to test anytime and result are produced fast and accuracy guaranteed without stress.
1.7 Justification of the Study
This class could be useful for lecturers in any school as well as those involved in student punctuality. Hence, this research class will be of immense assistance to the school environment because the computerized attendance system will play a very big role in removing the stress in manual attendance record keeping.
There are many other advantages, and some of them are listed below.
• It saves a lot of time in recording student punctuality.
• Database access is fast, reliable and secure in term of authorized access using data encryption and decryption.
• Fingerprint are secured, it cannot be hacked (login page).
• It helps in reducing the costs of labour incurred using the manual system of documentation (Paper, files, pens, marker and so on).
1.8 Research Questions
This research class will be guided by the following research questions:
(i). Why proposing a computerized student attendance management system for the school? Is it really important?
(ii). How will the proposed computer-based system affect the existing conventional system?
1.9 Limitations of the Study
Most constraint experienced during the course of writing this project is that of the actual software development. Codes required for fingerprint-based authentication was difficult to find.
The efficiency of the scanner can be reduced due to the roughages in the captured images which are often caused by worn-out or cut or dirt’s found on fingerprint. Therefore, there is every possibility that enrolled users can be rejected by the system. Also, the scanner or sensor cannot distinguish between a real and an artificial finger; therefore, it is possible to fool the scanner. In addition, if an enrolled fingerprint is been duplicated or spoof, it is not possible to change fingerprint as in the case of password because user finger biometric. Finally, since the system will be design using Java and it is platform independent.
1.10 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.
• Scanner a device for examining, reading, or monitoring something in particular.
• Fingerprint sensor is an electronic device used to capture a digital image of the fingerprint pattern.
• Rapid Application Development is a concept that products can be developed faster and of higher quality.
• Authentication is the process of determining whether someone or something is, in fact, who or what it declared to be.
• Use Case Diagram is used to show scenarios used for understanding the requirements of the system and to show the interaction between the user and the system.
• Flow chart or Activity Diagram is a Unified Modeling Language that represents the graphical class flows of stepwise activities and actions with support for iteration, choice and concurrency.
