CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.0 Background of the Study

What is Attendance?
Attendance is the state of going regularly to or being present at a place or event.

Attendance management system is a software developed for daily student attendance in schools.
It allows lecturer to grade students at the end of a semester. The software will also evaluate
student attendance criteria eligibility. Here the lecturers, who are handling the courses, will be
responsible to open floor for taking attendance. Each lecturer will have a separate username and
password with their face registered based on the courses they handle. An accurate report based
on the student attendance is generated after each semester. This system helps in evaluating
attendance eligibility criteria of a student. Report of the student’s attendance on weekly and
monthly basis is generated.
The system is designed to:

(i) Reduce the effort of pen on paper.

(ii) Make attendance system faster.

(iii) Eradicate system of impersonating.

(iv) Make attendance taken by lecturer more secure than the one of register that can be
damaged or lost.

(v) Eradicate manual process of student attendance management system.

Attendance management of students can be rigorous using the conventional method 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 approach of
using paper sheets and the old file system to confirmed students has been in use for many years.
There are so many bottlenecks with the conventional method, one of such problem is the
difficulty for the management to compute the percentage of student attendance in classes and
frequently modify their information, besides impersonation done by the student. Also in
institution, tracking and monitoring student time of attendance could be tedious task, time
consuming and as well prone to errors. As an alternative to traditional manual clocking process
by students in classes or during examination, characteristics can be used for authenticating
students. This research will focus on developing Web based Student Attendance Monitoring
System using python, Html, JavaScript and CSS to create GUI and Microsoft SQL server for the
database. In the manual signing processes, where lecturer give a sheet of paper to student to write
their names and matriculation number 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 take longer
time. The trending concern in this modern world is regarding national security, identifying theft
as well as on-line terrorism. Researcher refers to biometric identification as a solution for
detecting student presence in class (International Journal of Computer Science and Network
Security (2020)).

1.1 Project Overview

This software created has three main classes to act on the software

• Admin: The admin does all sort of adding and modifying details of students, lecturers and
courses (if required). The administrator must have a valid user id and password to login.
Valid admin can add/delete a student information, insert/update the academic calendar
and he can also view details of student.

The process of registration of student and lecturers is done by the admin.

• Lecturer: They have the priority to generate reports on the basis of attendance by courses
they handled and attendance in their scheduled period of lecture.

Lecturer must have to login to the proposed software before attendance can take place
and have the authority to view student profile and mark student present or absent.

If the student is 10mins late to the lecture room he/she might not be able to take
attendance.
 The lecturer can also identify each student through their images on their profile been
registered/created by the admin and the lecturer cannot do any modifications on student
profile except the admin.
Also there is a timer for each lecturer to take attendance on the software to avoid stealing
of time for student.
• Student: The student must have a valid username and face registered in other to login. If
face or username is not registered, there will be a pop up message that “student not
registered”. Student have the ability to check his/her profile but cannot do any
modifications but the admin only has the priority on this.

1.2 Scope of The Study

The scope of this work is to develop a proposed software for student attendance management
system that will reduce manual work and will be limited to computer science department so as to
be sure it is perfect for usage in other departments in the future. The software is a web based
application developed using python, html, JavaScript and CSS as the preferred programming
language for building interface and Microsoft SQL server for database design that will be used in
computer science department for taking student attendance and grading at end of semesters in the
case of study. it will be only done by the lecturer in charge of each course, it supports facial
recognition as biometrics. It does not cover other aspects of biometric.

1.2.1 Reasons For Using The Preferred Languages And Database

I. They are easy to learn and understand.

II. It contains simple tags and easy to edit.

III. They are supported by all browsers.

IV. MS SQL is highly secured.

V. MS SQL is easy to install.

1.3 Significant of the study

The System for Students using facial recognition 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. Thus, the
System will drastically reduce time needed to verify attendance data because the attendance
marking will be done automatically after face has been detected.

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 high level of security
whereby making it impossible for imposters and impersonators in making their ways to
examination halls. The System using facial recognition identification will keep historical data
making it easy for lecturers to access and grade students.

Student Attendance Monitoring System using facial recognition 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 facial identification System, the system of impersonating will be reduced. 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 eliminates all these downsides. The use of student facial recognition 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 mistakes and anomaly that is associated with manual signing in which student that
attend a class are marked as not present thereby losing the mark accorded to the particular
attendance due to multiple attendance sheet.
1.4 Aim and Objectives

The aim of the study is to develop a reliable and scalable student attendance management system.
To carry out the analysis of manual processes involved in class attendance, this is to be achieved
by the following objectives.

(i) To design a new system for the conventional method.

(ii) To implement the design using PHPSTORM as ide (integrated development

environment) for designing front end and MS SQL server for the database.
(iii) To keep track of impersonating.

(iv) To make student use a web facial cam for recognition and taking attendance.

1.5 Limitations of the Study

The efficiency of the software can be reduced due to inability to identify student faces which is
not registered or due to environment where the capture is to be taken place. Therefore, there is
every possibility that enrolled users can be rejected by the system. The only person that can also
cause limitation of the software is the lecturer that have access to the attendance page by not
activating the attendance for student in the appropriate time. Finally, since the system will be
design using python, html, JavaScript and CSS with Microsoft SQL server it won’t be able to run
on any other platforms other than Microsoft Window operating system.

1.6 Operational Definition of Terms

 Attendance: The action or state of going regularly to or being present at a place or event.

 Image: A representation of the external form of a person or thing in art.

 Password: A secrete word or phrase that must be used to gain access to something.

 Impersonating: An act of pretending to be another person for fraudulent act.

 Authenticating: An act of proving something to be true or valid.

  Biometric: This is physiological or behavioral characteristics unique to individuals, this
Include Fingerprint, hand geometry, handwriting, iris, retinal, vein and voice.
 Biometric Verification: is any means by which a person can be uniquely identified by
evaluating one or more distinguishing biological traits.

CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 What is Biometrics?

Biometrics is the science and technology of measuring and breaking down natural information.
In data innovation, biometrics relates to technologies that examine and measure physical human
body features, such as DNA, fingerprints, eye retinas and irises, voice patterns, facial patterns
and hand measurements, for validation or authentication purposes (Rouse, 2019).

The process of Biometric validation is way by which an assessing of some spotting biological or
traits can be distinctly identified in an individual. These unique identifiers constitute retina,
earlobe geometry, facial pattern, iris patterns, fingerprints, hand geometry, voice waves, earlobe
geometry DNA, and signatures. Law enforcement has implemented Facial-recognition
technology to fish out people in congregation with significant unwavering quality and reliability.
For people who try to impersonate another individual, earlobe geometry is utilized to detect their
identity. Signature comparison is not referring to as being dependable or reliable in isolation to
other method of biometric verification but provides an additional level of check or verification
when utilized in together with other biometric verification methods.

In Computer Science, biometric identification or biometric authentication is utilized as a mode of

identification and access control and also being implemented to detect individuals in groups that
are being watch or under surveillance (Jain, Anil K, Ross, Arun , 2018).

Using biometric verification is turning into a progressively regular for Authentication in

corporate and public security systems, consumer electronics and point of sale (POS) applications.
In addition to security, the motivation behind biometric verification has been convenience to
avert identity theft, biometric data is usually encrypted when it's gathered (Wayman, 2019). The
process of biometric verification process starts by using a software application to spot some
specific points of human physical characteristics which serves as match point or template. The
match point which is stored in the database is then processed using an algorithm that converts the
information captured into a numerical format. The input gotten from user input through
biometric scanner is now being compared to the numerical value stored, and the authentication
process if matches that of the database template is approved or rejected if it differs.

The identification verification process is the same irrespective of the biometric methodology
employed. An individual distinct feature is captured, processed by a software application and
stored as a template into a database. Subsequently, when there is need for verification of an
individual, a new physical feature is captured and compared against the template stored from a
data source.

(Kadry, Smaili, 2018) stated that using biometrics for recognizing users offers some
extraordinary favorable circumstances because only biometrics can recognize an individual as
himself or herself, biometrics could make keys and combination locks could turn out not to be
useful due to biometrics and all data, including biometrics is vulnerable whether in storage or in
processing state.
2.2 History of Biometrics

The expression “Biometrics” is gotten from the Greek words “bio” (life) and “metrics” (to
measure) (Rood and Hornak, 2018). Automated biometric systems have just become useable
over the last few decades, because of substantial improvement in the area of image and computer
processing. Although biometric technology is a subject of twenty first century, nevertheless the
Biometrics has its root as back thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians and the Chinese has a
major part in biometrics history. The focus today is on utilizing biometric face recognition, iris
recognition, fingerprint, retina recognition and recognizing physical features of human being to
put a stop to terrorism predicament and improve security measures. During 1870, Alphonse
Bertillon created a technology for recognizing people which is solely dependent on elaborate
records of their body measurements, physical descriptions and photographs. This method was
termed as “Bertillonage” or anthropometrics and the utilization was terminated in 1903 when it
was apparent that some people have same measurements and physical characteristics (State
University of New York at Canton, 2017).
The FBI and West Virginia University in year 1920 established a degree program (Bachelor’s
Degree) in biometric system that is after consulting some professional associations like
International Association for Identification. This serves as the first biometrics based degree
program despite some universities having started related courses in biometrics.

2.3 Types of Biometric Devices Available

There are several types of biometric data use commonly today. Each of these devices has a
different mechanism employed to captures data in different form.

The different types of biometric that are frequently in use today are devices that capture data in
various formats using different mechanism. The method of production and trait of the biometric
data indicates the encroaching of the protocol for enrollment and authentication of users
(Woodward, Nicholas 2016). The associated changes in the process of measurement and
production can give a vicious person an access and allowing them to alter the security shielded
around the biometric system by interfering with the operation of the mechanism for capturing or
by changing features of the biometric. There are many types of biometric devices employed
today. Some of these biometric devices are generally detected in common places such as movies,
hospitals, commercial places and many other places. Biometrics is essentially the identification
of human features that are distinct to each person. The best way to keep your devices safe and
ascertain people don’t illegally have access to your personal belongings such as files utilizing is
to implement any biometric technology available in the market.

2.3.1 Facial Biometrics

The image or video of an individual is generally views by the facial biometrics devices and then
compares it to the template stored in database. when matching is being carried out by the facial
biometrics, it compares the ratio, shape and structure of the face, the interval between the jaw,

top outlines of the eye sockets, the sides of the mouth, eyes, mouth, nose, the region of the cheek
bones and the positioning of the nose and eyes. When a user is being enroll in a facial
recognition program, various images are captured of the individual at different positions and
angles with various facial expressions. In the process of verification and identification the
individual will maintain a position facing the camera some seconds, after then the image is
verified against the template stored. In other to prevent an individual from putting on a picture or
mask when being scanned, some security criteria have been put into place. The user may be
asked to smile, nod their hand or blink their eyes during the scanning process. Also as part of the
security criteria would be to use facial thermograph to store the heat in the face.

A new method in facial recognition uses the visual details of the skin, which is captured in
standard digital or scanned images. This technique is referred to as skin texture analysis, which
turns the distinct patterns, lines, and spots obvious in an individual’s skin into a mathematical
space. Facial biometrics is very good when being utilize for facial authentication than for
identification purposes, because of the fact that an individual face can have a physical damage or
altered, disguise with a mask, etc. Environment can also affect the camera during the process of
capturing. Facial biometrics has been confirmed as a method that can improve validation and
authentication of users tremendously.

2.3.2 Retina Scanner

These scan are the distinct biometric feature/pattern in each individual’s iris, and compares it
with a certain number of distinct recognizing patterns which distinguish each individual
separately from other people. In a retinal scan, at the back of the eye, a biometric format is
shaped by recording the patterns of capillary blood vessels. Iris scanning can be carried out
remotely utilizing a highresolution camera and formats generated by a technique similar to that
of retinal scanning. Iris scanning and retinal scanning are both used to distinguish a person as
indicated by their distinct pattern. Despite their efficiency, implementing them is more costly and
complex.

2.3.3 Iris Scanner

Iris scanning is an automated method of biometric identification which uses mathematical pattern
recognition techniques on video images of the iris of a person’s eyes, whose complex random
patterns are distinct and be spotted from a far range. Digital formats which are referred to as
template are converted from these patterns by using mathematical and statistical algorithms
which allow the identification of an individual or someone trying to impersonate the legitimate
person.
Figure2.1 Structure of Iris

The major feature that depicts iris of the eye as the most ideal and accurate section of human
body for biometric recognition is that it is an internal organ which is better guided from damage
and wear by extremely sensitive and transparent membrane (cornea). This characteristic makes it
more better option to fingerprint, which can be difficult after years of rigorous involvement in
some manual labor.

The iris has a fine texture that like fingerprints is determined randomly during embryonic
gestation. Like the fingerprint, it is very hard (if not impossible) to prove that the iris is unique
(Christine, Modi, 2018).

2.3.4 Fingerprint Scanner

When considering the price of biometric identification scanners available in the market today,
fingerprint scanning is always on the lower end. There are some fingerprint scanners that can
only scan the actual print while the costlier scanners can capture the shape and size of the thumb,
presence of blood in the fingerprint and other physical characteristics on a finger. The expensive
scanner can capture a 3D image of the fingerprint which in turn makes it more difficult for such
fingerprint to be duplicated. The process of acquiring image by the scanner is either though
capacitance sensing or optical scanning.

Generation of biometric templates is based on matching minutiae characteristic features in

fingerprints. The examining of fingerprints for the purpose of generally requires the comparison
of so many features of the print format. These comprise of patterns which are aggregated features
of ridges and the minutia points, that are distinct features found within this patterns. Knowing
the attributes of human skin and structure is paramount to successfully utilize some of the
technologies of imaging.

The three fundamental patterns of fingerprint ridges are presented below.

(i) Arch: In arch, the ridges will enter from one side of the finger then rise in the center
forming an arc, and then exit the other side of the finger.
 (ii) Loop: The ridges enter from one side of a finger, form a curve, and then exit on that same
side.
(iii) Whorl: Ridges form circularly around a central point on the finger.

The arch pattern the loop pattern the whorl pattern

Figure2.1 Fingerprint patterns

The major minutia features of fingerprint ridges are ridge ending, bifurcation, and short ridge (or
dot). The ridge ending refer to the point at which a ridge terminates. Bifurcations are points
whereby a single ridge is divided into two ridges. Short ridges are ridges which are importantly
shorter than the average ridge length on the fingerprint. Minutiae and patterns are very important
in the examining of fingerprints since there has not been any record of two fingerprints proven to
be identical.
The ridge ending Bifurcation Short ridge (dot)

2.3.5 Voice Recognition

Every individual on the soil of the earth has a distinct voice pattern. Although the changes can be
hardly noticeable to the human hear because it’s a slight change. Nevertheless, with the aid of
exceptional software for voice recognition, those minute variations in each individual’s speech
can be spotted, tested, and authenticated to give access only to the person owns the tone, pitch,
and volume of speech uttered. Voiceprint recognition performs its operation by comparing the
vocal patterns of an individual with template previously stored. This type of biometric has the
ability to determine duress through adequate examining of pattern of stress in the input
voiceprint. This feature gives voice recognition an advantage over other forms

2.3.5 Hand Print Patterns

Similarly to finger print, everybody has distinct handprints. A handprint Biometric Systems scans
hand and finger and the captured feature is compared with the specimen stored for the user in the
system. The user is given access or rejected based on the result of this verification. Handwriting
recognition is the ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwritten input
from sources such as paper documents, photographs, touch-screens and other devices. The image
of the written text may be sensed "off line" from a piece of paper by optical scanning (optical
character recognition) or intelligent word recognition. Alternatively, the movements of the pen
tip may be sensed "on line", for example by a pen-based computer screen surface. Handwriting
recognition principally entails optical character recognition. However, a complete handwriting
recognition system also handles formatting, performs correct segmentation into characters and
finds the most plausible words.
When a person’s hand is place on a scanner, such user will have a distinct fingerprint pattern, as
well as the size and shape of the entire hand is also very unique. This is a more complex
approach compare to regular fingerprint scanning, and will definitely be more accurate with
minimum occurrence of falsification. Templates generated can be said to be very compact, and
the method is often sensed by users to be less invasive than other types of biometric devices.

2.3.6 DNA Fingerprint

This method works by taking a tissue sample from an individual and then sequencing and
comparing short segments of DNA. DNA technique has a very low acceptance rate because
samples have to be taken from human body and also the speed at which these samples are
processed

2.3.7 Deep Tissue Illumination

A relatively new method that involves illumination of human tissue by specific lighting
conditions and the identification of deep tissue patterns based on light reflection. This method is
claimed to be less prone to falsification than other forms of biometric techniques, b it is very
complex to imitate the process of light reflection (Nixon, 2003).

2.3.8 Voice Print Keystroke Pattern

This method works by discovering patterns while an individual is typing on a keyboard and these
patterns are then compared against previous patterns stored. Biometrics that has to do with
keystroke have been utilized to make password entry more complex, to provide certainty that a
password was inputted by the same person that saved it by comparing the speed at which it was
typed.

Some of these products are tend to be expensive than others simply because they employ
technology that is much more complex. Nevertheless, when considering the level of security
level required the amount of to acquire different types of biometric devices will be almost the
same. The features derived from the biometric are then converted into a biometric template. The
process of retrieving features from the captured data and converting it into a template are usually
important. These templates are then used as the foundation for verification during authentication.
The process by which biometric template are acquired, transmitted and stored are important
aspects of biometric security systems, because risks can surface from these are areas and
spurious attacks can be made which will compromise the integrity of the system.

2.4 Related Attendance Management System

There are some existing related works on the application of different methods in managing
attendance of students. Few of the methods are
  computer based lecture attendance management system: In this type of system, a card
reader is interfaced with a digital computer system and an electronic card is provided and
personalizes to each user for authentication.
 wireless attendance management system: it authenticates using the iris of the
individual. The system uses an off-line iris recognition management system that can
finish all the process including capturing the image of iris recognition, extracting
minutiae, storing and matching.
 Passwords attendance management system: The authors design and implement a
system that authenticates the user based on passwords, this type of system allows for
impersonation since the password can be easily fiddled. There are cases where passwords
could be forgotten which in turn prevents the user from gaining access into the system.
 The GSM-GPRS and RFID based systems: It works by using the position of classroom
for marking attendance which is not dynamic. Wrong attendance might be marked if
schedule or location of the class changes. One of the problems with RFID based systems
is that students will be compelled to always carry RFID cards and also the RFID detectors
are needed to be installed.

2.5 Advantages of Facial Recognition Over Related Works

I. It does not allow impersonation

II. It is faster in processing

III. It has the cheapest hardware requirement compare to others

IV. Its error or constraint is limited compare to others

V. It has fewer touchpoints compared to entering password or pin

2.6 Process of Facial Recognition

• Detection: This is the process of finding a face in an image. Facial detection detects
and identify individual faces from an image containing one or many people’s faces.
• Computer vision: Machines uses it to identify people, places and things in images
with accuracy at or above human levels with much greater speed n efficiency.
 • Analysis: The facial recognition system then analyzes the image of the face. It maps
and reads face geometry and facial expressions.
• Recognition: The system can identify a person by compairing the faces in two or
more images and assessing the likelihood of a face match.

2.6 Summary of Review

In summary, Biometrics is a distinct step to identity management that offers user convenience,
increased security, cost-effective provisioning and a non-repudiated, compliant audit trail for the
system user and operator. The tokens and password cannot ascertain an individual using a system
is the legitimate individual except if natural features such as fingerprints, facial recognition,
irises, retinas, voice recognition and other characteristics possible. The method of validating
users using biometrics can be so frustrating for users and expensive for system operators
however the users just have to do it because it helps in personal authentication in order to reject
imposters or frauds. Using biometrics for identifying human beings offers some distinct benefits
because only biometrics can identify you as you, biometrics could make keys and combination
locks obsolete and all data, including biometrics is vulnerable whether in storage or in processing
state. Biometric have devices, such as facial scanner, fingerprint scanners, retina scanner, iris
scanner, voice recognition that are been used in the authentication of a person’s confidential or
getting a person’s real data. Also Biometric consist of a reader or scanning device, Software that
converts the scanned information into digital form and compares match points and a database
that stores the biometric data for comparison. Biometrics are applicable in several areas or
almost all areas now, areas like commercial as a whole that in terms of banking sectors, buying
and selling, airport etc. the government areas as in law enforcement agencies, immigration
agency, custom agency etc. and in forensic areas for criminal investigation, terrorist
identification, parenthood determination and missing children.
 CHAPTER THREE

SYSTEM ANALYSIS AND DESIGN

3.1 Analysis of the Existing System

Attendance is an important aspect in institutions, regular attendance will not only ensure full
exposure to the scope of majors and opportunities available at institution, and it is also one of the
criteria used in determining your final grade. Tracking and monitoring student time of attendance
using the manual attendance in colleges and universities could be tedious, time consuming and
more prone to errors. The manual attendance system that is use in classroom (matriculation
system) is not too secure because some students can write other student’s matriculation number
not present. For manual attendance process, the most common problem is the lecturer need to
take student daily attendance and manually filled the record in attendance sheet or book for every
lecture. If the attendance sheet is missing or misplace, it could lead to a big problem because the
lecturer need the attendance record to make analysis and generate an attendance report. Another
problem is the lecturer will need more time to analyze and generate the attendance report because
the lecturer needs to search and refer the old attendance record first. Besides that, an error could
happen when the teacher makes the calculations to generate the attendance report by themselves.
Even though the attendance record is hassle to keep by the lecturer, management report is
required in urgent basis. Analyzed attendance record is required by the school management for
future actions is normally being delay because of the lack of precise.

3.2 Justifications of The New System

The new system is going to deal with the limitations of the existing system by; keeping historical
data that makes it easy for lecturers to access and grade students, providing high level of security
whereby making it impossible for imposters and impersonators in making their ways to the
classrooms. The system will allow the lecturer to monitor each student attendance, track down
truants and take the appropriate action and reduces the stress in queuing up which result in delay
and often time in the damage of the attendance sheet. The new system will provide user friendly
interface which will help to guide each user to use it correctly without any specialized training.

3.3 Methodology

Top-down model was adopted in designing the facial Based Student Attendance Monitoring
System. The result of the analysis was broken down into different components where the design
is started from the main component down to the elementary components. The System was
categorized into three (3) major subsystems which are; admin subsystem, and lecturer
subsystem and student subsystem. Each of the listed subsystems above has a different user
privileges to use the system.
Admin subsystem, here the user of this subsystem has the following privileges;
add/delete/update records and information of the entire system. This subsystem is further broken
down into; add Courses, enroll student, enroll lecturer and report. In the listed subsystems the
administrator can delete, add, and update the subsystem information.
Lecturer subsystem, unlike the admin subsystem here most privileges are taken away, the
lecturer can only activate attendance, view a student record or marked attendance of the courses
he/she was assign to lecture on. The subsystem is further broken down into; (I) course (II) lecture
taken (III) activation duration and (IV) profile.
 System

User Start Page

Admin Sub program Lecturer Sub program Student sub program

Open floor Mark Att.

Reports View marked

Modify Scan face Enroll
Enroll students students and
and lecturers lecturers
profile

Figure 3.1: Top Down Design approach for the system

3.4 Data Collection

The major purpose of this work is to eliminate the use of paper in manual attendance processes
and all the risk associated with it and carry out the analysis of manual processes involved in class
attendance of students with the aid of Facial based student attendance monitoring System. For
these I met with some lecturers and some students in computer science department, and asked
them to tell me the information that they need from students for the assessment of their class
attendance in order to assign marks. Then they mentioned; matriculation number, student name,
level, gender, contact, email and facial enrollment. All the information listed will be the main
information to be collected from each student. Then also asked department to tell me the
information they also need from the lecturers in order to assign courses to them. Then they
mentioned; lecturer ID, courses taken for the semester/session, Lecturer name, email, contact,
password, level and facial registration etc. this information listed will be the primary information
to be collected from each lecturer and so also the administrator.
 Start

Display

1. Home
2. Register
3. Login
4. How it works

NO
If

register

Student registration

If

login

YES

YES
 NO

Student login lecturer login admin login

Update password Open attendance Dashboard to

perform CRUD
View attendance floor operation

Student takes attendance Stop

Fig3.2 Flow Chart for User Start Page

Figure 3.2 showed the User Start page the new system in a flowchart format. The User Start page
is used as the landing page of the system then and each user base on their role will select the
module they have the privilege to access.
 Start

display

Is username
and password
correct?
NO

YES

1. Enroll lecturer
2. Enroll student

YES

Registration
NO Error message
successful

Modify lecturer and

student profile

Stop
 Fig3.3 Flow Chart for Admin Sub Program

Figure 3.3 represents the admin sub-system. Here is where users who logged in as admin are
redirected to. The user of this sub-system maintains the entire system by performing actions such
as; enrolling lecturers and students, assigning courses to lecturers and change password etc.
 Fig3.4 Flow Chart for Student Sub Program

Figure 3.4 represents the student sub-system. Here is where users which are the student take their
attendance for a particular class after the lecturer must have activated it with the duration of time
the lecturer wants the attendance marking to last.

Start

Capture face

Verification module

Does face
No
Matches?

YES
Mark As Present

Display Notification

Stop
3.5 Database Structure

Table 3.1 Administrator database

Table3.1 represents the table structure of admin database. Here all admin personal records are
stored and access.
Table 3.2 Course database

Table 3.2 represents the table structure of course database. All courses that students are to offer
and take attendance are stored and accessed here. The courses sub-system uses this database to
manage courses.

Table 3.3: Lecturer database

Table 3.3 represents the table structure of lecturer database. The lecturer database is where the
information needed from a particular lecturer. This database is only accessed by view lecturer
subsystem.
Table 3.4 Student database

Table 3.4 represents the table structure of student database. The student database is where the
information needed from all students is been stored and accessed by the administrator for
updates.

Table 3.5 Attendance database

Table 3.5 represents the table structure of Attendance database. The Attendance database is where
the Attendance of all enrolled students is been stored and accessed by the Students and Admin for
updates.

CHAPTER FOUR
 SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION, TESTING AND INTEGRATION

4.1 Choice of Programming Language

The system was designed using common and popular web based development technology which
includes php storm and MSSQL Server 2008 R2.

• PHP STORM: Php storm is used to implement the server side logic of the design. The
reason for using this IDE (integrated development environment) is because of its fastness
and easy way in creating web applications. It is an ide for writing python, JavaScript,
CSS and html which allows codes to be manipulated easily.
• Microsoft SQL Server: MSSQL server is used to implement the back end of the new
system. The server uses relational database management system that offers a variety of
administrative tools to ease the burdens of database development, maintenance and
administrations. It also allows the use of stored procedure which is used to implement
some of the business logic directly from the database.
• Python: python is a popular programming language, created by Guido van Rossum and
released in 1991. It is used for web development(backend), software development,
machine learning, mathematics and many other fields. Python is used for backend during
the development of the proposed system.
• Java script: JavaScript is used in millions of Web pages to improve the design, validate
forms, and much more. JavaScript was developed by Netscape and is the most popular
scripting language on the internet. JavaScript works in all major browsers that are version
3.0 or higher.
• Html: HTML is a hypertext markup language which is in reality a backbone of any web
application. Every web or hybrid mobile application cannot be structured without the
knowledge of html.
• CSS: This means Cascading Style Sheet. The layout of the document is taken care of by
the CSS with the use of formatting tags, without the use of style sheets, the designing of a
page would become more and more difficult to create as HTML documents was clearly
separated from the document's presentation layout. Styles were created by the World
Wide Web Consortium (W3C) a non-profit, standard setting consortium responsible for
 standardizing HTML in addition to HTML 4.0. Cascading Style Sheet is supported on
Netscape, Internet Explorer, Firefox and other web browsers.3.4.2

Following are the python framework or library that will be used in the development of the
proposed system:
i. OpenCV (Open Source Computer Vision): This will be used to perform image

processing (like reading, writing and deletion of image files), it will also be used to start
the webcam device for real-time face recognition and credit card scanning.
ii. Pytesseract or Python-tesseract: is an OCR tool for python that also serves as a
wrapper for the Tesseract-OCR Engine. After the credit card has been scanned,
TesseractOCR Engine will detect text from the credit card, once the text has been
detected, Pytesseract will be used to extract the text from the image.
iii. Haar-cascade is an algorithm that can detect objects in images, irrespective of
their scale in image and location. It will be used to detect user’s face from
webcam.
iv. Flask is a web framework that provides libraries to build lightweight web
applications in python. It will be used to convert the developed system into web
based where user can access anywhere, anytime.
4.2 The System Main Menu Implementation

This refers to how the main menu in the system is being implemented. There are several
interfaces that make up the entire system. They are described below:
4.2.1 Main Menu

Figure 4.1 shows the Home, administrator login, lecturer activator setup and student attendant
login and registration. Here the administrator can login by clicking on the Admin login and then
proceeds to other settings or updates, settings in terms of inputting of administrator username
and password. The lecturer and students so also can proceed to other action by clicking on their
various options on the main menu.
 Figure 4.1: User Start Page

4.2.2 Admin Login Page

Figure 4.2 shows the login page of administrator. The administrator types in his/her user name
and password in order for them to navigate to the main page where he/she to perform enrollment,
updates and settings.
 Figure 4.2: Admin Login Implementation

4.2.3 Lecturer Activator Setup Page

Figure4.3 shows the attendance activator for the lecturer in any particular class. The lecturer will
have to login, input fingerprint for verification and activate a particular session of class and the
duration of time it will take for the attendance marking session of the student. Students cannot
take attendance without the lecturer activating.
 Figure 4.3: Lecturer Attendance Setup

4.3 Implementation of The Sub-System

Selecting the administrator (Admin) login option from the main menu results in a display of
Login form, after providing a valid username and password, access is then granted to the
administrator who can also be the lecturer, which then leads to the administrator sub-menu,
which have the file dashboard, students, lecturer, course and report menu (all students, lecturer
and courses registered). The administrator can enroll students and lecturers, change password
and modify their profile from the settings menu in the administrator’s sub-menu.
Figure 4.4: Administrator Sub-menu
In figure4.5, the students are being enrolled by the administrator. The student’s bio data is being
registered and the face of each student is been captured for authentication of the attendance.

Figure4.5: Student Enrollment submenu

Figure4.6, the lecturer activates the system for each session before student marks attendance. The
lecturer inputs his/her course for the session and the duration for the attendance marking.
 Figure4.6: lecturer attendance activator

The figure4.7 shows the facial verification of the student for a particular session of class. At this
time the duration time that the lecturer set is still on, if any student comes after the duration time
the attendance manager shows session not activated.

Figure4.7: Student facial verification

4.4 Query Sub-System Implementation.

The MSSQL Server 2008 R2 which setup the relational database of is very important because it
provides the authentication system with efficiency, consistency and reliability. However, after
the administrator must have input the information’s of all the students for a particular session, the
administrator can therefore query a particular department to know how many student is in that
particular department from the database and also how many student had being enrolled and
authenticated for a particular course. The lecturer can also query the attendance update from the
database to know how many students were present in class for a particular lecturer in order to
assign marks for attendance to the present students.
4.5 System Testing and Integration

This is a formal process of soliciting feedback on or from a system that is being developed. It is
used to determine the effectiveness, the correctness, efficiency, reliability and robustness of the
proposed system. Unit testing was carried out on individual components of different layers in the
application to verify and ensure all different components such as classes are at the required
minimal functional level. Also, integration test was carried out, where all the independent
components or modules are then integrated together to further verify the functionality of the
interfaces of each components so as to spot defects in various interfaces and the behavior or
responsiveness of each components when interacting together.

4.6 Test Plan

It involves a stage-by-stage assessment of all the subsystems which are carried out to determine
the performance and efficiency on the authentication system and comparing the result to the
overall desired result. This verifies that the system elements have been properly integrated.

4.7 Test Data

The data needed for the testing comprises of all student information such as student ID, mat no,
name, level, department and sex, faces and the lecturer personal information such as staff ID,
name and department which is to be filled when administrator is enrolling students or lecturers.
The course details so also such as course code, course title, course description, add course and
course unit which is to be filled by administrator after the students and the lecturers have been
rolled and authenticated.
CHAPTER FIVE

SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

5.1 Summary

This project is focused on the protection of student manual attendance system using facial
biometric. The facial Biometrics is one of the most successful applications of biometric
technology which was used in this Facial Based student attendance monitoring System which
serves as an alternate for traditional manual attendance processes involved in class attendance.
Reviewing and assessing the authentication system for student class attendance follows a
hierarchical flow from policies down through the specific actions taken to enforce them.

Attendance is usually noted using paper sheets and the old file system in the case of study, this
approach has been in use for a long time. It becomes difficult for the management to regularly
update the record and manually calculate the percentage of classes attended. For any growing
institution, tracking and monitoring student time of attendance could be tedious, time consuming
and more prone to errors. There are many concepts to understand and the technological solutions
can be complex. Dynamic institution driven solutions continue to tout a silver bullet but none
ever really exists. Keeping up with security threats and countermeasures requires a continuous
education and understanding.

This project covers the basic concepts so one’s knowledge can be outfitted and applied to the
situations that you will face as a certified IS auditor, however diverse they may be. Again for this
project, the focus is not only on the technical details of how this facial biometric works in the
case of study. Rather, it assumes that you have some base knowledge of these issues and is
geared more towards identifying the risk and control points of the authentication system. The
system’s inner workings and the exact technology used to secure them will change over time,
probably in the time it takes you another researcher to work on it.
In chapter four, the programming languages that was chosen were python, html, JavaScript and
CSS with MSSQL Server 2008 R2 those languages were discussed briefly also with the Php
storm as ide. The implementation of all the components were tested and integrated for proper
performance and evaluation of the system. This verifies that the system elements have been
properly integrated.
5.2 Recommendations

Through analysis of the data and research conducted for this study, the school district maintains
or develop strict guidelines for student attendance and monitor factors that could hinder a student
from attending school on a regular basis. The use of encryption for files in the database transit is
an area of protection that should be visited. I strongly believe in protection. Web based
authentication system is an important management tool which reduces the lecturers work or load
in the case of study. Therefore, is highly recommended that all schools should adopt it.
The system was designed to ease the lecturer work and also allow lecturer and students to use the
system without taking special training for it. if any modification or upgrading arises it should be
done with the idea of making it a user friendly so as to make it easily accessible to users,
efficient and readily available to specified user.

5.3 Conclusion

It can be concluded from the above discussion that a reliable, secure, fast and an efficient system
has been developed replacing a manual and unreliable system. Results have shown that this
system can be implemented in academic institutes for better results regarding the management of
attendance. This system will save time, reduce the amount of work the administration has to do
and will replace the stationery material with electronic apparatus. Hence a system with expected
results has been developed but there is still some room for improvement. Having presented a
biometric identity based facial scheme. I have utilized, extended and implemented ideas in the
areas of error corrected string construction from biometric data, key generation, and pairing
based facial schemes to form the components of the system. The research presented the
application of such a scheme to repudiation situations. Discussion on advantage of using the
biometric data in the public key and described the utility of using biometric evidence in disputes
that may arise. This work has been an insight into the hidden problems; the manual attendance
system tends within daily activities. The problems are fair and need computerized authentication
system to replace the manual student attendance system.