Portability allows a teacher to bring his or her mobile phone wherever he or she may go particularly into a classroom, which would guide him/her to efficiently manage a class. Today, mobile phones can be used to increase students’ organization, hastening collaboration, and maximizing portability of technology. In this study, an attempt has been made to develop an Android- Based Class Rec-ord System which will focus on achieving mobility in managing and monitoring student class record. Its main purpose is to create an archive of consolidated and secured record of student information, assessment results, and attendances stored in android-based mobile phones. With the use of mobile phones, record-ing, searching, viewing and updating of a student’s pertinent academic infor-mation will be faster, handy, and just a click away.
In the era of globalization, developments in information technology played an important role in various sectors of human life and mobile phones are the main actors in today’s era [
Some faculty members claimed that the maintenance and management of student academic information such as their attendances and assessment results is a tiring process. In the traditional way, the attendance and grade entry of all the students are first recorded manually in a log book, and then again manually entered in a desktop application for computation. Such work as to record each student’s assignment, quizzes, attendance, examinations, oral recitations, projects and/or reports, adds a heavy workload to a teacher. Many of them feel that the time they take in recording and computing for the grades of their students is a time that could better be spent elsewhere, like in preparing for lessons, researching or meeting with their students. The manual method employed by the teachers in regard to the recording, updating, and retrieving of students’ academic information results in frequent errors in data manipulation, data entry, and sometimes a total loss of it.
The rapid development of electronic devices and wireless communications technology provides a foundation for improving the learning and teaching environments through the use of new technologies. Extensive work has already been done in this area. A lot of mobile applications that help a teacher-educator in managing student records on a daily basis already exist.
Ebenezer, et al. [
Rastogi and Gupta [
The study “Mobile Based Attendance Management System” conducted by Reddy, et al. [
The study “Student Attendance Tracker System in Android” [
Motivated by these excellent results, the researcher proposed the development of an Android-Based Class Record System which will provide efficiency in managing a class record, cater to all faculty/teachers with different mobile phones in different Android OS versions, and allow easy operation management.
The proposed Android-based Class Record System will be installed in the faculty member’s mobile phone and will be used to take attendance, record grade entry and update students’ academic information even in an offline mode, which is even when there is no network connectivity. The application fetches the details of the subjects allotted to the respective faculty and the list of students enrolled in a subject using Local Area Network (LAN) connection from the server. Once the information has been fetched, the application stores it in the mobile phone’s internal database and the faculty member can now record, view, and update student’s attendance and grade entries wherever and whenever required. As the semester ends, the faculty member may simply do the grade computation in their mobile phones.
Android-Based Class Record System, as shown in
server architecture, where the client is the consumer or requester of services, whereas the server side is the provider of services [
The figure above shows the client side of the system which composes of an android application written in Java programming language and will serve as its front end. The middle layer, which connects the client side to the server side, is a web service developed in Visual C# language and will be used in fetching the necessary data from the server. The server side is the university’s computerized system and its database server. Data communication between the client to the web service and the web service to the server will be established with the presence and connectivity of a local area network.
The function “take new attendance” allows the faculty to get and record the attendance of the students in a particular day. Upon opening the application, the faculty can select the class list option which brings up the list of subjects handled by the faculty. As the faculty selects a certain subject, the system displays the list of enrolled students in that particular subject. To mark a student as present, the faculty simply selects the name of the student resulting in a change in its font color. “New grade entry” function on the other hand, enables the user to record earned scores of the student in a particular activity. However, the system does not allow raw scores; therefore, it should be in its percentage equivalent. After opening the application, the faculty selects a subject in which a particular activity was performed and selects “new grade entry” option to initialize the function. The system will require the faculty to input the name of the activity and the score earned by a student. “New grade group” function is used to create student performance evaluation criteria. This function is a prerequisite action of the function “compute final grade”. The “take picture” function resolves the difficulty in memorizing the faces of students due to the enormous number of students in a class. These student pictures are stored in a file folder created by Android Developers Tool (
The “update” function involves processes that bring new data and information on to the system. These processes include addition, modification, and deletion of existing data to make the system current or up to date. In this study, data that may need to be updated are the student attendances, grade entries, and grade group.
This module shows the list of data and information that can be accessed, viewed, and searched by the faculty user. These data are the subjects handled by the faculty, the students who are officially enrolled in those subjects, the attendances and grade entries earned by these students, the student evaluation criteria and its percentage, and lastly the school calendar currently stored in the mobile phone.
This module contains sub-functions which allow the faculty members and the proposed application to access the database server. It includes the download? fetching necessary data such as subject and student lists and checking new school calendar year; upload actual submission of student final grades to the database server with the use of mobile phone; and lastly, restores backed-up class record.
Setting up a member account after installation is required to validate if the user is a legitimate faculty of the university. The system checks if the inputted account matches an existing valid account in the school’s databases. Moreover, if there is a necessary change in the accounts, the system allows its resetting and updating. Every semester of each school year, a faculty member usually handles new subjects, thus, to facilitate the download of new class lists, update record function is provided. But first, a user checks if new school calendar is available. A new school calendar means a new set of subjects for that current semester and school year. The user selects a default school calendar before hitting the update record function.
The development and implementation of the Android-Based Class Record System requires technical resources and requirements such as hardware and software resource. Hardware requirement refers to computer and device specifications used both in system design and system implementation. These requirements are necessary to effectively provide enough processing power for the system. Following are tables that show the hardware, and software resource specifications for the system.
Shown in
HARDWARE | RECOMMENDED |
---|---|
Processor | Quad Core ARM Cortex-A53 |
Random Access Memory (RAM) | 2 GB |
Storage | At least 4 GB available space |
Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN)/Data | Any compatible WLAN/Data Connectivity |
Display | 5’ Super Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) |
HARDWARE | RECOMMENDED |
---|---|
Processor | Intel i7-4790 @ 3.60 GHz |
RAM | 16 Gigabytes (GB) |
Hard Disk | 400 Gigabytes (GB) |
LAN Card | 100 Mbps Ethernet |
Mouse | QWERTY mouse |
Keyboard | Ergonomic keyboard |
Monitor | 1280 00 screen resolution |
ware Development Kit (SDK) emulator and Java Development Kit. These requirement guarantees a faster and more reliable system development and data processing.
Software requirement refers to programming and application languages used as a platform and tool of the Android-Based Class Record System. Following is the software and tools to be used in the development and implementation stage.
As shown in
The table below presents the optimum software requirements to be used in system software design, coding, and debugging stages. These software will serve as tools for the realization of the proposed Android-Based Class Record System.
SOFTWARE | RECOMMENDED |
---|---|
Operating System | Android OS v4.4 (Kitkat) or higher |
Database Software | SQLite |
SOFTWARE | RECOMMENDED |
---|---|
Operating System | Windows 10 64-bit |
Programming Language | Visual C#, Java and XML |
Development Toolkit Software | Java Development Kit (JDK), Android SDK with Android Debug Bridge (ADB) plug-in, Android Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE) |
The Android-based Class Record System aimed to somehow improve teacher’s instruction and classroom management with the use of information and communication technology. It is a dynamic application program designed to simplify the process of taking student attendances and handling their academic records. It is a mobile-based application program designed to run on any android mobile phone. A faculty member who wishes to use this application is therefore required to install this app.
Update Record button in home screen is used to download data such as subjects assigned to a faculty teacher and the lists of students enrolled from the server and stored in the mobile phone’s internal database. The lists of subjects and students to be downloaded are based on the default calendar year set a while ago.
Class List button in home screen is used to display the subject assigned to the faculty teacher. The display is based on the default school calendar year, thus, every time you update and make necessary changes on the default calendar year, the list of the displayed subjects will also be updated (
When the faculty user hits one of the class names or subject names in Class List Screen, the Class Menu Selection which holds the major functions of the application such as the taking of attendance, recording of student evaluation results, updating these pertinent data and the computation of final grades will appear (
of the subject, its schedule, the date of current attendance that will take place, and the total number of meetings/attendances of the class. In addition, 2) it also shows a complete list of the students enrolled in a particular subject. 3) Along with the names of the students, it also displays their student identification number, course, and year. If the faculty user decides to take the attendance of the class, he/she may simply click the name of the student if present. Color display of student names will turn blue to indicate that the student is present in a particular class session. 4) A number that appears below the name of the student indicates the number of attendance in which the student is present. To end the process, the faculty user may click the save button to save and store the data.
Tapping the New Graded Entry button in the Class Menu Selection screen (
Update is a process which allows the data to be changed, added or deleted. When a faculty user taps the Edit Attendance button from the Class Menu Selection screen (
Figures 8-11 are the graphical interfaces for the update of grade group. If the faculty wants to modify the student performance evaluation criteria, the faculty member simply clicks the edit entries, Edit Group or Delete Group and the dialog interface will be on display.
As the semester ends, a faculty teacher computes all the evaluation results of the students to arrive at a final grade. This activity, computation of final grade, has already been addressed by the system. However, it can only be possible if certain sub-activities are implemented. These sub-activities includes creating new grade group and assigning each evaluation activity, such as midterm, final, quizzes, and others to a certain group. The above figures show the interface for creating new grade group. Grade group is used to group related activities into one and assign each group with its equivalent percentage. 1) When the faculty user clicks on the New Group button, 2) a data entry form is displayed. The faculty user inputs the name of the grade group (midterms, finals, or quizzes) and the corresponding percentage equivalent. If all inputs are entered, the faculty may simply click on the OK button to terminate the form. 3) The grade group created earlier will be displayed in the Grade List screen under Group Entries. 4) To group unassigned entries under a certain grade group, the faculty user just clicks and holds a particular unassigned entry and drags it into a particular grade group under group entries. If the faculty user wants to ungroup and/or regroup an entry, he/she may simply click on and hold the entry and drag it back to unassigned entries or new grade group. Clicking the save button will saves the data and some changes in the internal database. Lastly, 5) the proposed application also popped up a warning message if user inputs an evaluation criteria percentage exceeding to a hundred percent (100%). These activities are all in preparation for the computation of student’s final grades (
In this paper, the researcher discussed the current problems encountered in traditional approaches of class record management, and further offered a solution through the development of the proposed system.
With the Android-Based Class Record System, mobility in recording student attendances, assessment results and grade computation was attained. The system simplified the process of taking student attendances and handling their academic records. It further caters to the needs of the faculty for an efficient tool in managing class records, thus, providing an accurate source of student academic information. All of the usual processes and activities in maintaining a class record from input of data to output of information were adopted by the system.
The Android-Based Class Record System may be considered as an alternative system for users who do not have a mobile phone as recommended; but one thing is for sure: this application will be a productive tool if used in a classroom setting.
Resuello, J.L. (2017) Android-Based Class Record System. Open Access Library Journal, 4: e3461. https://doi.org/10.4236/oalib.1103461