Well, attendance might be required in order to report back to immigration, and this can be taken with the student's signature on a sheet of paper! easy and simple... biometric and smart cards are being used in campuses in Singapore.

However, having said that - what is in attendance if the student is pre-occupied with what is happening around them... and not concentrating on the learning that is going on in the class...

Regards

Here, I am talking about lecture sessions of 90 minutes taken in a closed environment (Classroom or Laboratory). The need is to simply record the presence of the student. Later, that count of number of sessions may be required for evaluation purpose. Here I am looking for a solution where teacher is least involved.

My experience of SMART cards is that they break and someone always forgets to scan. If a large class enters a lecture hall and the scanner is by the door then this creates a bottleneck and students get frustrated. Some systems also ask that students scan on they way out (I have no idea why) and these get terrible results as students are more interested in getting out the lecture hall than in having this recorded. Electronic systems (despite their faults) are best if data is needed at an institutional level as this reduces the significance of those who fail to scan. If you just want the data for yourself then a simple pen and paper register is likely to produce better results. Pass it round 10 minutes before the end and then remind students just before they leave that they should have signed. There does seem to be something about a signature that makes things feel more official.

Thanks Erik. Nice to hear your experience. Still, I am looking for a better electronic way to record attendance with least effort. Can some biometric way or usage of RFID can provide a viable solution.

Thanks Jane. I am also of the similar view. Smart card usage can always be abused by the student community. In my view the simplest way is to use an EXCEL sheet, where one can mark P or A or L to record the attendance of a student during or after the session. It takes hardly 2 to 4 minutes. Still, I am looking for some automated way.

Excellent idea. But, is it possible after each session? And moreover, when students are in classroom, systems are not accessible to them. But still it can used in LAB environments.

So using mobiles/laptop attendance can be recorded at any time. Conducting a Quiz is one of the options. As Jane suggested, one can impose time constraint also. But, still I presume that such devices are not always with all the students.