Name of digital innovation: QR code based contactless smart attendance system.

Abstract:
Quick Response (QR) code based contactless smart attendance system is a technological
breakthrough that was conceived, developed & implemented successfully at the Lovely
Professional University. The system played a crucial role at the time when the whole world was
recovering from the pandemic & educational institutes started functioning in a hybrid mode
specially for the activities related to the career of the students such as placement drives. It was a
big challenge to take the attendance of students for placement activities through the traditional
ways like using pen & paper or biometric machines as the risk to deal with COVID-19 through
these methods was very high. So, this system helped the university to overcome this barrier. In
addition to the advantage of the contactless system, it has sped up the process of taking
attendance and hence enhanced the whole placement process.

Write Up:
Need/ Challenge: Emergence of COVID-19 brought with itself a bunch of unknown challenges,
on one side it was challenging to turn from offline mode to online, on the other side it was
equally challenging to turn from online mode to a hybrid mode especially for the activities where
student’s career is concerned. The Lovely Professional University accepted the challenge as an
opportunity and never stopped providing career services to its students. Taking student’s
attendance during placement drives through traditional ways like using pen-paper or biometric
machines was a challenging task especially when drives were big & risk of COVID-19 was
there. Some placement drives required this task to be repeated for each round of the drive. So,
the need of contactless smart attendance system arose.
Approach: Quick Response (QR) code based contactless smart attendance system is a
technological breakthrough that was conceived, developed & implemented successfully at the
LPU. The system lies between online & traditional drives as a facilitation for the attendance
taking process. The system requires a simple login process by the placement officer to generate
an encrypted QR code with specific information. This can be done at any time before the drive.
During the drive, or at its beginning, the officer displays an encrypted QR code to the students. If
the drive is being conducted in offline mode, then QR code is displayed at a central location
through the projector, else if drive is being conducted in online mode, QR code is displayed on
the central online portal available with the students. The students can then scan the displayed QR
code via a smartphone application module provided by the university. The code along with the
student identity taken by the application confirms the student’s attendance. The QR code gets
refreshed automatically after set interval (for e.g., after every 10 seconds).Only one student can
access the code from one smartphone for one placement round.
Improved University Function: The system saves not only time but also the efforts that were
supposed to be put by the placement officers during each placement drive and hence improved
the placement process of the university.
Enhanced Productivity: As the system maintains the record in the database so number of
analytical reports and business intelligence dashboards available with placement officers/ higher
management helped in better decision making and enhanced the productivity.
Saved Cost & Time: The system not only reduced the efforts that were supposed to be put by
the placement officers but also the recurring cost of pen & papers/ biometric machines. As the
system is smart in its nature so hundreds of students can mark their presence at the same time
within a fraction of seconds ultimately reducing the activity time.
Scalability: The system is highly scalable, in addition to placement drives it can be implemented
for all such activities where students’ participation record or presence is required like cultural/
sports events etc. The system is scalable & simple in its nature hence can be replicated elsewhere
in the education sector.