Mumbai campus buzz: Biometric system to help colleges keep clear attendance record

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Powai made biometric attendance mandatory for the entire institute three years ago after which attendance was taken using identity cards and fingerprints of the students. Making attendance mandatory is at the discretion of professors and thus, the college offers some courses where students are graded based on their class participation.

Shreeyesh Menon, student and chief editor of the college magazine, said, “For the courses where the grading is dependent on the class participation of students, having a flawless attendance system becomes a priority. This is the reason for IIT Bombay to move to the biometric attendance system.”

The St Xavier’s College of Mumbai is another college that is in the process of implementing the biometric system across all courses in the college.

The college had a pilot run for the process in the last semester with a first-year Economics class. Dr Agnelo Menezes, Principal of the college, said, “We are planning to go completely biometric from June. The pilot run was successful and we are now working on a system for the entire college. This will end the proxy system that students have come up with and there will be no doubt about the attendance.”
The college authorities have also made plans for any technical glitch that might come up during the run and have decided that for the first year, the biometric system will work simultaneously with the manual attendance system so that they have a backup in case of an issue.

At the Tata Institute of Special Sciences (TISS), the foundation course is taken by students across all the courses. In order to avoid an error in marking attendance for the 850 odd students, the institute has developed a system of smart cards for students which record their attendance for the course.

Adwaita, a student at TISS, alleges, “Students used to play a lot of tricks to increase their attendance earlier. However, ever since this system has come into place, there has been no scope to cheat.”

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