EMU Announces Campus Check In QR Code For Students

Eastern Michigan University recently made an announcement that they are ready to lauch a system that will allow them to track attendance on campus. Instead of relying on the teachers, the onus of keeping track and checking into the campus is now passed back to the students…some to school, scan and there you have it, your attendance checked. This sounds a little like FourSquare system here but the university’s invested some money into developing a system that makes it possible for students to check in by scanning a QR Code.

The university has a long-standing program called the Learning Beyond the Classroom program which tracks the required credits that the students are required to earn. The credits, according to some, counts towards the end result.

The university’s Associate Vice President revealed that they have all begun using smartphone to read QR Codes that students came up with or upload attendance info into their system automatically. Students can scan the code, log into their myemich.edu personalized account and perform their task right there and then on their smartphones.

The implementation of the said system is in line with the school’s head who has been looking for a kind of technology that was mobile and does not cost an arm and a leg. Working together with some other leaders who had the same vision, they managed to identify someone who was willing to come up with the phone app for them at an affordable pricing.

Basically, the school wanted to maximize the spending because my theory is that if the school had to spend an exponential amount of money on the app and it cuts into the university’s budget, the parents and students would have to share the bite of that one. So, at the point of writing this article, the university spent minimally so, the students will not have to pay to use the app.

The school hopes that student leaders who wanted to use the app for their school-related stuff are free to use it and will receive proper training on how to use it more effectively.

At this point, the school acknowledged the fact that nobody, at the end of the day, liked to be tracked. The system will be monitored and they will see how it plays out in the end. I think it is an amazing way to keep track of the students and that other departments and other campuses should follow suit.

Let us know what you think in the comments box below.