Southern Adventist University’s Information Technology (IT) Department has reached
the final stages of development for the new Attendance Tracking System (ATS) app. The ATS
app will automatically record students’ enrichment credits online.
The ATS app was built by junior computer science major Natamor Pasaribu. IT student worker Jared Powrie tested the app.
The ATS creators are working towards attendance recorded through smartphones as well
as devices for students to swipe their cards.
The app is currently being used for LifeGroups across campus each week. Although
Powrie says that the ATS app is ready, the IT department is still working to build a system in
which numerous students can “check-in” to an event without creating a bottleneck.
“We have found, from small tests around campus, that when using a swipe system, very
quickly the flow of students begins to bottle up like traffic,” Powrie said.
Powrie said that to avoid bottlenecking, the ATS creators are looking into the
development of personalized push notifications, sent through the Southern app, for students login. Devices would also be set up at events for card swiping.
Currently, students’ enrichment credit is recorded through the collection of individual,
handwritten paper cards. Students write their information, including name, date, time, ID number, location and event attended. After collection, the cards are given to Student
Development to record.
“Two or three poor souls manually comb through [the cards], trying to read the handwriting of potentially thousands of students who attended the event and then enter in their
details to Abode, or residence life as most know it,” Powrie said. “We designed a system that will
do all of that automatically. A user will ‘check-in’ to an event that has already been setup, then
‘check-out’ again at the end of the event.”
The IT department is facing the challenge of building a connection between the ATS
system and Abode system. Abode is created and maintained by a third-party individual. The
connection between parties does not yet exist for the enrichment credit to be automatically
entered into the system.
Just recently, Abode has been working on the integration needed to automatically send
attendance to the system. Miguel Rivas, IT software developer, said that the ATS developers will
most likely begin testing integration soon, leading to an entirely automated enrichment
credit recording process.
Image credit: Jared Powerie