DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF STUDENT ATTENDANCE MONITORING SYSTEM USING FINGERPRINT

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF STUDENT ATTENDANCE MONITORING SYSTEM USING FINGERPRINT

CHAPITRE ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Attendance management of students at institution can be tough utilizing the standard way of paper sheets and old file system method. Every academic institution poses some standards concerning how attendance is to be confirmed for student in classes, laboratory sessions and examination halls. That is why keeping the accurate record of attendance is very important. The strategy of using paper sheets and the old file structure to confirmed students has been in use for years. There are so many problems with the conventional system, one of such problem is the difficulty for the management to compute the percentage of student attendance in classes and often adjust their information. Tracking and monitoring student time of attendance in an institution can also be a time-consuming and error-prone task. As an alternative to traditional manual clocking process by students in classes or during examination, biometrics characteristics can be used for authenticating students. This research will focus on developing Fingerprint based Biometric Student Attendance Monitoring System. The fingerprint Biometrics is used in this study because it is one of the most successful applications of biometric technology. In the manual signing processes, where lecturer give a sheet of paper to student to write their names and signature as a form of confirming their presence for a particular class session, falsification in student attendance mostly occur a situation where by a student can sign on behalf of his or her colleague as being present in the class when not true can be so difficult to prevent from happening especially for large classes where row count can takes longer time International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security was published in 2009.

The trending concern in this modern world is regarding national security, identifying theft as well as on-line terrorism. Biometrics, according to the researcher, is a solution for detecting user identity and security challenges that arise in the modern era. Biometric identification is any automatically measurable, robust and distinctive physical characteristic or personal trait that can be used to identify an individual or verify the claimed identify of an individual. Biometric science makes use of measurements of a person’s behavioral (keyboard strokes, mouse movement) or biological (fingerprint, iris, nose, eyes, jaw, voice pattern, etc.) characteristics. The feature captures are being digitally transformed into a template. The recognition software can then be use to discover an individual as the person they claim to be. Fingerprint recognition is the most common biometric method adopted in identification of a person (Ismail 2009).

Biometric is a field of technology that uses automated methods for identifying and verifying a person based on physiological and behavioral traits. Because specific areas of the human body is use in biometrics, the issue of getting lost is not conceivable and for password to be quickly guess can be simply avoided. Furthermore, when speed and convenience are considered, using biometrics is more efficient and convenient than using passwords and ID cards.

Using a particular person fingerprint as a form of authentication is just like using natural physical data as a password. The benefit of using biometric authentication is that it is absolutely distinct to each person. There are no two persons who have the same fingerprint, it is difficult and impossible for two people to have the same fingerprint, and fingerprints from various people can never be the same. Also, a fingerprint can never be guess by a criminal, such as a password which imposter can easily predict using a user birth date or any other common password. Infiltration is difficult to do because criminals cannot snoop around to collect user passwords when using an ATM with a 4-digit pass code (Valasquez 2013).

Fingerprint can be categorize as one of the most mature biometric traits and is accepted in courts of law as a legitimate proof of evidence. Fingerprints are adopted in forensic analysis globally in investigations of criminal. More recently, there are growing numbers of individuals and commercial users that are currently using or strongly putting into consideration of using fingerprint-based identification for no any other reason other than the matching performance biometric technology has demonstrated as well as a better understanding of fingerprints.

Although there are so many positive impacts for using biometric authentication, however, unlike username and password, biometric data is a physical feature of a person that is fixed and cannot be change. If a person might have access to adequate scan another person fingerprint, that scan has the power to mislead the Touch ID system. In that case, the fingerprint features of a person can’t be change consequently a criminal can’t be prevented from having access to your personal information or files. As fingerprint scanning becomes more commonly accepted at anytime, this may become a substantial challenge. A criminal can have access to different accounts because with one fingerprint, a criminal may have access to multiple accounts that implemented authentication using fingerprint.

1.2 Problem Description

Most institutions still employ the conventional approach in lecture rooms or laboratory sessions nowadays. Lecturer or instructor will give out a sheet of paper with list of student’s name to sign or in some situations, the student will be the ones to write their names, student id and matriculation number to confirm their presence for a particular class. Falsification in student attendance does occur rampantly in the traditional manner. Another student, for example, can easily sign an attendance form on behalf of another student. In other to prevent this problem, it is required to design an Authentication System for Students using fingerprint Biometric recognition that will be applied to track and keep the attendance of every student in a certain class. In comparison to using barcodes in smart cards, fingerprints are a unique feature for everyone. Therefore, this system designed in this project work is not based on the existing barcode system. Tracking and monitoring student attendance can be difficult, time-consuming, and error-prone. The security of the existing attendance system that are now use in classroom (signature system) can be readily exploited. Some students can master other student’s signature. Thereby, helping their colleague who are absent for a particular class to sign the attendance sheet using the duplicated signature. This research work’s Fingerprint Attendance Monitoring System for Students is a more secure platform where students mark their attendance with their fingerprint.

1.3 Aim and Objectives

The study’s goal is to design and build a dependable, scalable, and cost-effective Fingerprint-based Student Attendance Monitoring system. This is to be attained by the following objectives:

(i) To carry out the study of manual processes involved in class attendance and examination attendance.

(ii) To create a new system for the (i) preceding and

(iii) To implement the design using Microsoft Visual Basic.net.

1.4 Scope of the Study

The goal of this project is to create a Fingerprint Based Student Attendance Monitoring System that will improve attendance management by using fingerprints as a form of authentication for proof of class attendance. The system will be a window-based application built with Microsoft Visual Basic.net as the preferred programming language for the user interface and Microsoft SQL Server for database design. It does not cover other aspects of biometric.

1.5 Limitations of the Study

The efficiency of the scanner can be reduced due to the roughages in the captured images which are often caused by worn-out or cut or dirt’s found on fingerprint. Therefore, there is every possibility that enrolled users can be rejected by the system. Also the scanner or sensor cannot distinguish between a real and an artificial finger, therefore it is possible to fool the scanner. Furthermore, because user finger biometric, it is not possible to change fingerprint if an enrolled fingerprint is duplicated or spoof. Finally, because the system will be designed in Visual Basic.net, it will be unable to run on any platforms other than Microsoft Windows.

1.6 Importance of the Research

The System for Students using fingerprint Biometric will eliminate the use of paper in manual signing processes and all the risk associated with it. One of the risks of using a paper in class attendance is that it can be easily misplaced and students cheat by signing for each other not present in the class thereby defeating the aim of taking the attendance. Tracking and monitoring students time of attendance could be tedious, time consuming and susceptible to error. As a result, the System will drastically reduce the time required to verify attendance data.

The System also allows the institution management to track or investigate student class attendance in a particular course having poor attendance thereby enabling the management to rectify the situation by providing the necessary interventions. The system provides a high level of security, making imposters and impersonators unable to gain access to examination halls. The System employing fingerprint Biometric would maintain previous data making it easy for lecturers to access and mark pupils.

Fingerprint Based Student Attendance monitoring System is extremely useful in institutions especially during classes, tutorials, laboratory sessions and examination during which heavy security are normally deploy to validate student’s identity in order to cob imposters, with the use of Authentication System the number of security personnel will be greatly reduce. Most lecturers’ handout sheet of paper for their class attendance, which can easily be misplaced or damaged and poses a lot of stress in cumulating grades for their students. The system allows the lecturer to monitor each student attendance, track down truants and take the appropriate action. Thus, the system avoids all these drawbacks. The Authentication system is not only useful to the institutions and lecturers alone, even the students benefit a great deal by reducing the stress in queuing up which result in delay and often time in the damage of the attendance sheet. It also prevents errors and anomalies associated with manual signing in which students who attend a class are marked as not present, resulting in the loss of the mark assigned to the specific attendance due to multiple attendance sheets.

1.7 Operational Definition of Terms

Biometrics refers to physiological or behavioral characteristics that are unique to individuals, such as fingerprints, hand geometry, handwriting, iris, retinal, vein, and voice.

PIN personal identification number.

Biometric Verification is any way by which a person can be uniquely identified by evaluating one or more differentiating biological attributes.

Scanner is a device used to examine, read, or monitor something specific.

A fingerprint sensor is a piece of electrical equipment that captures a digital image of the fingerprint pattern.

Rapid Application Development is the idea that products can be created more quickly and with higher quality.

Authentication is the process of ascertaining whether someone or something is, in fact, who or what it professed to be.

Case Study A diagram is used to depict scenarios for understanding the system’s requirements and the interaction between the user and the system.

Flow chart or Activity Diagram is a Unified Modeling Language that represents the graphical workflows of step wise activities and actions with support for iteration, choice and concurrency.