New technology ensures quality attendance in higher education
– A small digital revolution for both students and those of us who are responsible for attendance registration, says system manager Kevin Benjamin Zeppo Adriaansen at the University of Agder.
Since the autumn semester of 2017, the University of Agder has been using Notice of Attendance for its students, where the students themselves check in to their lectures in the NOA app. According to system manager Adriaansen, it has improved everyday life for both students and the administrative staff.
There are around 1300 students who use NOA at UIA today; where the largest subject has approx. 200 students, and one can imagine how long it will take for the lecturer to carry out roll call and manual registration of attendance and absence. Important teaching time can disappear here.
Before NOA was introduced at the university, paper lists were used. Whether it was roll call, or the students themselves who wrote on rotating lists, it turned out to be a cumbersome way of working. When the lists then came back to the administration, they had to be manually entered into Excel. There are requirements for documentation of attendance, and if you are unlucky enough to experience paper lists going astray - you can risk having to pay a massive fine.
Adriaansen is clear in his speech on the question of how important attendance registration in higher education is:
“We don't take attendance for fun; it is absolutely necessary for professional educations to ensure that the student has been present and participated in the necessary teaching before they go out into working life and work with people.”
– Kevin Benjamin Zeppo Adriaansen, System Manager at the University of Agder
By using NOA, educational institutions such as the University of Agder can ensure that students have participated in the necessary education before they enter working life.
It can be costly not to have things in order, but for those who use the tool for digital attendance registration, this is not a concern. NOA has made it possible for UiA to carry out the registration digitally, where each student registers their own attendance via their mobile phone, and the old paper lists are now digitized and available in the cloud for lecturers and administration.
Each lecturer has direct access to their class lists and will have the opportunity to manually enter those who are unable to do so themselves.
One of the biggest highlights that Adriaansen mentions is the latest update to the system in the fall of 2019, where NOA integrated with FS, the core system for all study data at the University of Agder and the entire higher education sector. This means that all the data needed for digital attendance registration now comes directly to NOA, so that today's users do not have to import all the information manually. Improved uploading and synchronization ensures a better flow.
We thank the University of Agder for their trust and the opportunity to publish reference statements. We look forward to further cooperation and joint development.
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