Logging attendance
 

Hello, I have some questions about how your teams log attendance.

2014 was our rookie year and we had some organizational issues, so we were wondering whether it's worth it to keep track of how many hours members spend at meetings. Do you keep track of hours, or just attendance? Do you have any benefits for members that put in more time (awards, priority for team trips, etc)?

We were also thinking of using a fingerprint scanner to make a clock in/clock out system, but this would be more of a software/electrical project to keep busy during the summer than a practical solution.

Thanks in advance from all of Team 5136!

Re: Logging attendance
 

1197 uses the paper method. There's a clipboard with a sheet by the door into the shop. Students sign in and sign out as they go through the door. Tracks both attendance and hours, dirt cheap to implement, and relatively easy to remember because it's practically staring you in the face as you exit.

Re: Logging attendance
 

We do this as well. Students have an weekly hour requirement (if they don't sign in and out properly, they don't get their hours), and it's one of the considerations for choosing drivers.

Re: Logging attendance
 

In the 2014 season we used a timeclock software that was an opensource program. A laser barcode scanner was connected, so that when the students would come in they would scan their barcode that would be located on the wall, which would clock them in and the the same when they leave to clock out.

For this upcoming season we are switching the timeclock software so that we can have more control over functionality and tracking of the hours. Additionally we are replacing the barcode scanner with a RFID reader so we just have to bring our id's with us.

It may not be as simple as the good old pen and paper but we seem to find it interesting since its something different

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We use an online time tracker. It is used to check hours, but since we don't have any hour requirements we use it to make sure everybody has left when we leave for the night.

Re: Logging attendance
 

We have a sign in sheet that everyone, including the mentors (though to be honest I don't know why since I pay for my own travel) are required to do in order to record hours as part of the criteria to travel.

Re: Logging attendance
 

this is interesting mind sharing?

Re: Logging attendance
 

This is intresting mind sharing the software?

Re: Logging attendance
 

This year we used tracked the days that members would come instead of hours. The system we used was great except, we would designated someone to sign people in (he or she tend to forget and we would miss days) and then someone could easily go in and change the attendance, also some member would be at a meeting for 20 min and then go for an hour and comeback for another 2 hours. So it became hard to track

Re: Logging attendance
 

Mentors log students hours after each meeting. We have requirements for traveling with the team and for lettering - you want to make sure those at competition were around enough to know what's going on, and lettering serves as an additional incentive to be present even more.

Re: Logging attendance
 

We wrote a login program that uses a finger print reader to log people in and out.

Re: Logging attendance
 

Team 4063 has used http://www.mytimestation.com/ for the last 2 years. We called and received a free account since we are non profit.

The time station app runs on an old Iphone and we can run several reports and export to excel for processing.

The app allows you to print your own QR Codes and we print them on the back of the student name tags.

Mr. B.

Re: Logging attendance
 

There is a really good spreadsheet that a team posted on CD a while ago. I cannot find the post, but our team has used it for the past 3 years. Everyone gets a password and just types the password into a green cell, and it serves as the clock-in/clock-out. I don't have my flash drive on me right now, but I will upload the file when I find it.

EDIT: I found the CD thread on this topic http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=98413

Here is the DL link for the sheet: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2490?

You can use badges if you want, but you don't have to.

Re: Logging attendance
 

We have been using this one for the last 3 years.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2490

In the "native" download it tracks hours as the metric. Our Varsity letter requirement is based on days attended of "Mandatory" meetings. I have added another sheet to the workbook, that calculates this data, based on the log data.

PM if you would like to have me send you my workbook. Right now it has all of this years data, and I would need to scrub the student names from the sheet, prior to sharing.

If your metric is hours though, right out of the box, the file above works great.

Re: Logging attendance
 

1923 works in a storefront space (not our school), so for us the attendance log is a safety thing as well as a team involvement requirement.

We use a paper method- sign in and out at the door, etc. It works well for us, especially since we have a parent chaperone sitting at the front desk when we're meeting.

Since we're in a non-school location, we also have rules about coming and going. The chaperone has to make eye contact with the parent/sibling picking you up (can't just leave to walk over to McDonald's or something), and only students over 18 may drive themselves to the build site.

Hours, like many other teams have stated here, are looked at when applying to travel with the team and when students apply for leadership positions. However, it's not the only thing we take into account. A student could be there from 9am to 9pm on Saturday but not have contributed -- it's about the noted effort you put in during your time there as well.

For us, paper method works just fine. We tally people's hours at the end of the week & add them up when we're looking for that information at various points in the year. We just prefer not to overcomplicate it.

Re: Logging attendance
 

We have been logging attendance with sign in sheets and the hours are logged electronically. As other teams have mentioned we use this for lettering.

An electronic method to track the hours would save a number of admin hours. Sounds like a good off-season project for the programming team!

Re: Logging attendance
 

We have a custom web app for tracking student attendance. It's both a team participation requirement and a safety issue since we work out of NASA.

When students arrive, they use any lab computer to sign in (the app restricts sign-ins to the lab's IP address to prevent cheating).

To sign out, students have to check with a mentor (so that we can enforce a mandatory 15 minutes of cleanup before leaving). The mentor sends an SMS with the last four digits of the student's school ID to a Twilio number that hooks into the web app, which signs them out. The app checks the origin of the incoming SMS against a whitelist and tracks which mentor signed a student out.

If there's enough interest we'll probably open-source this system later in the summer.

Re: Logging attendance
 

We just use a Google Spreadsheet form. One computer in the lab is dedicated to displaying the sign in / out page. Team member selects their name, whether they are entering or leaving, and what time they want to log. We ask students to specify the time since often people forget. Team members sign both in and out.

We haven't had any problems with cheating, but we could notice the time stamp of the entry (as opposed to the time given by the student) to see if people are signing in during non meeting times. Not a big deal for us.

Re: Logging attendance
 

Compared to everyone else, ours (from this past year) seems so mundane. As lead mentor, I kept a Google spreadsheet with the days of build season, and noted on which days people attended. I then used some formulae to get a percentage of meetings each person attended. It's easy enough to see who shows up and who doesn't.

No counting hours, though we don't have much opportunity for students to show up outside of 6-9pm M-F 12-6 S meeting times.

Last year, we used essentially the same system with a paper spreadsheet.

Re: Logging attendance
 

Start track hours and collect data...have couple of students do it. Then you can decide what do with data. I am sure others have chimed in how hours are important to be in drive team or take lead roles etc. This is important for recommendation letters or any recognition.

Re: Logging attendance
 

One thing that we did this year, which really depends on your financial status, is reimburse students for their hours. Each student got $1 per hour logged, rounded up to the nearest hour. This money was not given to the students, but taken out of our St. Louis trip cost for each student (so each student/parent got a specific dollar amount for their St. Louis trip cost.)

If you don't go to St. Louis, just give the parents a check or apply it to your most expensive trip.

Re: Logging attendance
 

I believe that SPAM is going to the RFID system next year too. We aren't allowed to take our ID's out of the "PIT" at all so that negated our problem of forgetting them this season. We've been doing pen and paper since 1998 and its suited us just fine but some students will sign in at times earlier than they arrived (I'll admit I did this a few times rookie season because I was a varsity athlete coming from practice) so advice on pen and paper is have a mentor or parent do the sign in if its on honor system pen and paper.

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I'd be very interested in your system, if you're willing to share.

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We've always tracked time for the ten years our team has existed. We started out with paper but as the team grew that became a lot of work for me and there was some time inflation. We switched to finger print terminals about 5 years ago and never looked back. Currently we use the FingerTec AC100C .

Hours are the currency of our program. Students need to log at least 50 hours in the fall to qualify for the competition team. Competition team members need to log at least 50 hours to qualify to miss school to come to the district events. Only the top 50% of the students can attend the world championships. Of course many students log way more than the minimum. So much so that we also set caps that they can't exceed 150 hours during the six week build season.

When a student applies to be a manager of a department, their hours are one of the things we look at. Sure there are other criteria as well, like how effective they were during those hours, but that at least sets an expectation that dedication matters.

I can't imagine running a FRC program and not tracking hours.

Re: Logging attendance
 

We don't bother.
There hasn't really been a need for us to keep track of hours or attendance.
If you've signed up, you're on the team.
If you're on the team, you get to go to all events.

Re: Logging attendance
 

When I was on 11, we had a cool system where each student was given an ID with a QR code on it, and when they came it, they flashed it in front of a PC with a webcam, and then they did the same when they left, and we logged hours electronically that way.

Re: Logging attendance
 

I'm just wondering, why do you limit involvement? Our team's from a small school, and our "core" students, which usually end up being only 6 kids, end up putting in well over 150 hours per build season.

Re: Logging attendance
 

Last year we used Google Forms to do attendance. Students would sign in and sign out by entering their school ID numbers in a form we made. There are scripts that you can find that will use your data to give you the hours that each person was there.

Re: Logging attendance
 

Before we had the cap we'd have some students putting in 250+ hours over the course of six weeks...almost a full time job. We're a college prep private school where every class is essentially AP. Needless to say, those students tanked their GPA. It made us quite unpopular with the faculty and parents. Even the 150 cap is still a lot in a school like ours but seems doable. Note that this is just lab time. Some students do a lot of work outside of the lab on CD, CADing, researching, competitive analysis, outreach, etc.

Since we made the switch we had the happy by product of students learning better management and delegation skills. It also means the key students take their time in the lab seriously and don't squander it.

Re: Logging attendance
 

Yes please!

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4607 is interested in the App. We have been looking at biometric time-keeping - but I would rather put that money into new gear...

Thanks!

Re: Logging attendance
 

We use a system known as TimeTrex. You can get it here www.timetrex.com/onsite_community.php?step=download. It is very easy to learn. PM me if you would like more details.

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Our team has a forum with questions of the week (phpbb). Every week we have to log our hours in it. Monday meetings are also required so we have a list of everyone's names and you sign by your name.

Re: Logging attendance
 

That would be great!

Our team currently uses a simple clipboard where students can sign in and get credit for their attendance. This however is also problematic because we can't track hours, which then creates a situation where students can arrive late/leave early and still get credit for their attendance.

Especially because we have a relatively large team with 50+ members, having an efficient system to accurately keep track of attendance will be greatly helpful to us.

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We use a system called TimeClock MTS in conjunction with a monitor and numpad screwed to the wall right as you walk into the shop.

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341 has used a 2-step fingerprint scanner to log attendance for the past couple of seasons. Students scan their thumbprint at the door and then punch in their student ID number to verify.

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I'm planning on rewriting our time keeping system this summer. I'm thinking about building in different sign in/out techniques to include at minimum a pin ID system, a finger print reader, and maybe a QR reader. I'd be happy to release it to the community when it is done. What other things would you guys like to see included?

Re: Logging attendance
 

We just emailed the mytimestation asking if they have anything for non profit and they gave us a free account for 200 people! :D. I definitly recommend asking them for a free license.

Re: Logging attendance
 

Not an attack against you or your team, but an honest question:
Is that really necessary?

Maybe I've just been involved with small teams (who need all the students we can get), but it seems like over-kill to me. Or do you (larger teams) have serious issues with students fudging numbers?

Re: Logging attendance
 

It's not really a problem with students fudging numbers, it just makes it easier to total the 30 students hours with the click of a button. It also just takes the press of a finger (finger print reader is what we use) to sign in and out. The students can also check at any point how many hours they've accumulated throughout the season.

Re: Logging attendance
 

This does seem like a but much... I still don't quite understand why teams put so much importance on keeping track of hours.
What's the main reason why you teams keep track of it? Travel?

Re: Logging attendance
 

We require 60 hours of build season time to travel to a competition. We also require 100 hours of build season time to be eligible to be in a leadership position or be on the drive team.

We also do it for safety and protection reasons. If we have students logging in we know who and at what times they are there. This way if we ever have to go back and track down if a student was at the school on a certain night for certain times for any reason we can.

Re: Logging attendance
 

So you're only using one? The way your post read (that I initially quoted) sounded like students needed to log in with all three.

Re: Logging attendance
 

Oh, my bad. I meant as in the ability to do any of the 3 from the one program. We prefer the finger print reader because, well its hard to forget your finger at home, but I was thinking I'd build in the ability to use a pin or QR reader if any other teams wanted to take advantage of the program.

Re: Logging attendance
 

I have several motivations when I track our kids' times. We have travel and varsity letter requirements related to how much time kids travel. Signing in and out is important so we know who is on site and if anyone has left. On our team, we try to give the kids real-world experience in design, manufacturing, business management, etc. One of the real-life things they learn to do is sign in and out of work. The kids also use it as a competition to say who logged the most hours during build season.

Re: Logging attendance
 

For us, it's an official attendance record to earn class credit, and the student with the most hours is recognized at the end of the season. It's also a sanity check.

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We set some basic minimum standards to travel with the team and attend events. For us it's 40 hours. Theoretically the team meets 100 hours in a build season, but we always end up adding more meetings than that, so students need to be there about a third of the possible time to travel.