We will be running a trial of attendance capture in large lecture theatres using card readers throughout Autumn 2018. This trial will help determine the best options for university-wide implementation and identify any risks and issues involved.
Watch our video to find out about the trial and how to check-in.
Where?
Card readers have been installed for five large lecture theatres and the Woolf seminar rooms:
- Woolf Lecture Theatre (W-LT)
- Keynes Lecture Theatre 1 (KLT1)
- Rutherford Lecture Theatre 1 (RLT1)
- Marlow Lecture Theatre 1 (MarLT1)
- Cornwallis Octagon Lecture Theatre 2 (COLT2)
- Woolf seminar rooms: W1-SR1, W1-SR2, W1-SR3, W1-SR4, W1-SR5, W1-SR6
Who?
The trial will involve the schools that use the rooms with card readers installed the most. These are:
- School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science
- Kent Business School
- Kent Law School
- School of Computing
- School of Economics
- School of Physical Sciences
- School of Psychology
Students in these schools should check-in at events in these rooms by touching their KentOne card on one of the attendance-capture card readers. As this is a trial, if paper registers are provided, these must also be completed.
Students in other schools are not involved in the trial and will not need to check-in using their KentOne card.
Why?
At the moment capturing attendance is not done consistently and often involves paper records which need to be manually entered onto the system. This is a time-consuming task with a risk of errors. Attendance records can therefore be inaccurate and incomplete, and there is a delay in the data becoming available.
If this trial is successful we will look at implementing card reader attendance capture across the University. This will provide accurate and real-time attendance data, and not only save time and costs but also improve reliability and the overall student experience:
- Your attendance record would always be correct and up-to-date.
- A lot of administrative time spent entering data would be saved.
- The University wants to be able to help and support students. The data would enable us to see patterns of attendance and absence, which can give an understanding into why students might not be attending. If we don’t know this, we can’t do anything about it.
Card readers are being used as a large survey and a trial comparing card readers with a beacon+mobile app method have both shown that students at the University of Kent have a strong preference for card readers above other methods of attendance capture.
The trial will enable us to check that the system can handle large numbers of students and that the data is accurate.
What next?
All students and staff involved the trial will have an opportunity to provide feedback on their experiences in a survey around the beginning of November.
The trial will help us determine the best options for university-wide implementation and identify any risks and issues involved.