Attendance tracking

Saturday, May 12, 2018

Attendance tracking is where you confirm attendance by individuals on a course, verified by them entering a code into a system, being recognised by the trainer or showing ID to the trainer. CourseSales.com attendance tracking is supported in all licenses.

The reasons for tracking attendance may be a regulatory requirement, eg Australian government requirements include tracking attendance of foreign students to ensure adhereance to their visias.

CourseSales.com has a number of ways that attendance can be tracked. These include:

Manual, paper-based tracking using the registration list generated from those documents that are ‘registered’ on a particular course date. The registration list can be used by the trainer to verify identification and then sign the student in, adding times and dates where appropriate. Alternatively students to use this as a ‘sign in’ sheet. Data from this paperbased system could be entered into a spreadsheet or other analysis system for attendance reporting if this is required.

Kiosk for students sign in when they arrive at a course, this is a portal that the trainer logs into, then allows students to enter their External Reference Id to validate their details. This has the added benefit of enabling the capture or correction of information by using a form with new or existing fields.

Working with a third party to capture attendance information. This allows a wider scope of how you capture data, including biometic scanning, mobile selfie checkins, facial recognition and advanced reporting. Some third parties you could work with include

  • Jibble.io - least expensive, at US$2/month/user
  • My Attendance Tracker - free but does not record time of arrivals nor departures
  • Lots of other systems but the licenses are based on a per user arrangement, meaning a class with 20 students at the cheapest ie $5/user/month is $100 - just for one course! Delivering more is much more expensive. Enabling a fee for attendance tracking would justify additional investment in this feature like: mobile selfie checkins, facial recognition