Logging attendance

[mjc49]

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!

[Pat Fairbank]

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.

[Chris is me]

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.

[Christopher149]

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.

[Tungrus]

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.

[M. Lillis]

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.

[S.P.A.M.er]

Originally Posted by BEN35678

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.

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.

[jgerstein]

Originally Posted by Pat Fairbank

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

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

[Dale]

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.

[cjl2625]

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.

[SJohnTrombley]

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.

[magnets]

Originally Posted by Dale

\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.
\

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.

[brrian27]

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.

[Dale]

Originally Posted by magnets

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.

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.

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Pat Fairbank

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

Yes please!