Provision of a Student Attendance Monitoring System - Proof of Concept 12 month trial with option to extend for a further three, 12 month periods

At the University of Exeter Medical School (UEMs) attendance is monitored as part of the students’ assessment for professionalism. This is a very proactive engagement by the medical school and highly acknowledged by the GMC (General Medical Council). However, the ACCELERATE questionnaire (student annual feedback survey) has identified that one area for negative student feedback is our current attendance monitoring system. Unfortunately the way we take attendance currently (manual spot checks) leaves too much room for error and is a large administrative burden.

The University of Exeter Medical School is looking to install a real-time and accurate student attendance monitoring system for a 12 month proof of concept trial. At the end of the initial 12 month period the University may, at its sole discretion, decide to continue with the system for a period of a further three 12 month periods or to arrange for the removal of the hardware. The timescales for implementing the trial are tight and we would like to be able to work towards a mid to end of September go live date. We understand that this is a short lead in and accept that perhaps some functionality would have to come later than this, however, the full system trial should be functioning by the start of term two, January 2017.

The Medical School currently has 520 students, 200 staff (admin and academic), 8 teaching rooms and one large lecture theatre. The University is looking for a system which utilises cards (or similar) which are issued to students and the associated readers installed outside the teaching rooms. We do not envisage using biometric readers. The solution must be able to integrate with the University’s other systems, Scientia and SITS.

The Medical School requires a cloud based system which will monitor and report against attendance for its students. Both staff and students should have access to the information (depending on their access rights) and so the user interface should be user friendly, with minimal training required. For staff, patterns of non-attendance of individuals, modules and subjects should be reportable. Students should be able to access full data on their own engagement.