Abstract
Tracking students' attendance is an essential part of the educational process as attendance directly affects students' academic performance. Despite the many advances in education technology, attendance checking is still primarily done using manual methods like calling student names or passing around an attendance sheet. These solutions can be time-consuming, distracting and insecure. Technological methods, such as ID card scanning, can also be time-consuming for large classes. In this paper, we propose a Bluetooth-based system that uses the proximity of each student's personal phone to a classroom's Bluetooth beacon throughout a class period to automatically check attendance. We suggest that our solution is simple, inexpensive, requires minimal student and instructor involvement, and increases the security of the attendance-checking process. The novel features of our system, a quick assessment at the end of each lesson and a real-time feedback mechanism for students, provide instructors with richer data than simple attendance metrics. We present the main components of the system of the Automated Attendance-checking System using Bluetooth (AASB) and describe them in detail.