Facial Recognition in Classes: No More Escape

Educational institutions around the world are adapting to new technologies to be able to provide better education and all-around development to their students. With the tuition fees at an all-time high, they have to ensure that the students are following the rules of the institution so as to increase the quality of the education being provided. From tagging students electronically to installing cameras in the lecture halls, they are leaving no stone unturned. Among the many measures, the most important are the rules regarding attendance. It is an essential part of any student’s education to attend classes and be on time.

Facial Recognition Gives Power Back to the Teacher

For years a student’s attendance in class was done manually resulting in a lot of wasted time. The teacher had to ensure that each student is being marked correctly as attendance points were part of a student’s grade at the end of a semester. It could be quite complicated, and time-consuming, especially if the teacher had to deal with a large number of students. Many students cheated the system when their friends responded to their names and were marked as present when they weren’t attending the class. Proxy attendance can be prevented by implementing new technology in classrooms.

Slowly as more digital attendance technology came onto the market, such as biometric attendance systems, life became a little easier for teachers. But it had the disadvantage of being too slow with students queueing to touch into the system to be marked as present. Today, a more advanced form of attendance regulation is being tested, one that will change the way attendance is recorded. A facial recognition system in the classroom automatically captures the images of students without the need for human intervention. A camera is installed in the classroom that continuously detects the faces of the students in the classroom, matches them to a database and then marks their attendance.

Facial Recognition Helping to Gauge Student Interest

Often, students walk into the classrooms just to pass their attendance requirements. Students are often bored and uninterested in what is being taught and sometimes take a nap in class. A way of overcoming these problems is the facial recognition systems that will soon be a reality in most educational institutions. A Chinese lecturer has successfully created an algorithm for facial recognition that not just marks attendance but also shows how interested or disengaged a student is. The system monitors the student’s eye contact with the teacher and their facial expressions continuously so as to track their class engagement. According to the professor, Wei Xiaoyong, the algorithm helps him to find out if the students are ‘happy’ or ‘neutral’ doing the class so that he can modify his teaching methods to make them more interesting.

Implementation of facial recognition in classes can offer many advantages to educational institutions, teachers and students. It helps in reducing paperwork and saves time and money. It also helps eliminate any errors in attendance entries. It will encourage students to attend classes when they know that their attendance is being tracked and there is no other way to get attendance marked. It will become much easier for the institution to keep a track of absent and tardy students and take appropriate steps to help them become interested in the lectures.

Facial Recognition is Here to Stay

There is no doubt that facial recognition systems for attendance are the future. The system will help eliminate most of the issues that come with manual techniques and the other digital attendance systems being used in educational institutions around the world.