Introduction

In today’s business environment, having a productive and fully engaged workforce is one of the greatest assets in ensuring competitive advantage. As a result, many organizations are shifting away from manual and traditional methods of tracking employees and adopting modern and computerized clocking systems. These systems can track the movement of the employee at any given time including the time of arrival, time of departure, and the time spent within the premise but away from the work station. Organizations that use this system have greatly saved on labor hours. In a school setting, getting the most out of students is a big problem. Many students are not attending classes and keeping track of them is a headache for many schools. The manual signing sheets present many loopholes since students can sign in for their friends. For big classes, it is not easy to do head counts. Thus, the introduction of a clocking system in schools may be the ultimate solution to ensuring students attends at least 75% of lectures which will result in improved performance, better time management, and security.

Summary of the project

The project aims at introducing a clocking system in the school. A clocking system uses biometrics to identify each student and track their attendance and movement between classes (Tirmann & Tăbuşcă, 2016). There are various systems available in the market at various costs. For example, Time-Logix, a systems provider, requires just $399 in upfront costs. This includes purchasing and installing the hardware and software components of the system, and ongoing technological support (Handrick, 2018).

If approved, the project will run for eleven months. This time is distributed to various events including searching and contacting vendors or calling out tenders which will take about two months, installing the hardware components around the various classes which will eat up 3 months, setting up the software in one month, biometric registration of all students which will take an additional 3 months, and piloting which will take 3 months.

At the end of 11 months, we hope to have fully installed and tested the clocking system in the school. Besides, all the data relating to students will have been moved to the new system which will enable fast-tracking of attendance and performance. The system will also capture and assign specific codes to all the classrooms and lecture halls and other facilities within the school. Moreover, all the manual attendance sheets would have been done away with, and a new system would have been installed to record class attendance by the use of fingerprints.

In addition to increasing efficiency in attendance monitoring, the system will also be used to help students in time management. For example, it will record the amount of time a student spends at one point, say, at the gym. Teachers will be able to know which students spent too much time playing in the field and summon them for advice. Students who spent time in the library will be known, and this can be used to encourage students to go to the library for research. The system will also harmonize the multiple checks within the school. For example, the school will not have to maintain separate systems for a library and a sports center. Also, each teacher will not have to maintain a separate attendance sheet. This will reduce costs and enhance efficiency.

Security will be enhanced especially because all entry points will be controlled biometrically. It will be easy to monitor who enters any particular premise. It will also be easy to lockout students and strangers from accessing certain areas when they are not supposed to. For example, rowdy students can be banned from attending the sports center as punishment.

Project goals and objectives

The three project goals are: to enhance student performance, to help students in time management, and to reduce administrative costs and workload associated with keeping track of students’ movement from teachers. Student performance is substantially determined by their ability to attend all classes and go to the library for private studies. This project will ensure that students attend at least 75% of classes while also encouraging them to use the library. Time management is a critical component of academic success. It is common for students to go to school but use much of their time in activities that are not academically important. Thus, the system will enable the school to watch the amount of time students spent in any particular area and advise them accordingly. The clocking system when installed will relieve, of the time-consuming tasks related to tracking students hours and will ensure the highest form of data precision.

Two project objectives are: to install a clocking system and to register students using a biometric system. Objectives are the means to an end. Installing the clocking system is the first activity and capturing biometric information is the second. These are the primary activities for the project to achieve the said goals.

Project structure

For this project, I will employ the Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT). This involves identifying the specific tasks (e.g., tendering for the vendors, purchasing the system, installations, biometric registration, etc.); establishing the proper sequence of these tasks; estimating the amount of time required to complete each project task; and determining the critical path (Gogoi & Hazarika, 2017). The structure of the project will be drawn from the functional structure whereby the major functional area will be addressed by team members focuses on that area. The project team will consist of a mix of people. This will ensure that all the necessary skills, knowledge and understanding harnessed within the team. At the top, the project will be coordinated by an executive committee that will be composed of the school administrators. This committee is the ultimate decision-making body.  Below the executive committee will be the steering committee which will work for hand in hand with the project manager to oversee the technical elements of the overall solution. The steering committee will consist of a team of specialists. The project manager will report to the steering committee which is answerable to the executive committee. The team that will oversee the implementation of the project will be drawn from the school staff. After the completion of the project, each will go back to their daily routine in the school.

Key stakeholders and customers

The key stakeholders in this project include the school administrators and students. The role of school administrators is to authorize the funding of the project. Also, they are responsible for authorizing the use of the system in the school. They will also be responsible for encouraging students to use the system. Further, they will provide security to the system during and after installation. Students’ role includes registering themselves through the system and protecting the hardware components within the school compound. Although the system is designed for schools as the primary customers, it can also be used in business premises and factories.

Conclusion

In summary, clocking systems present multiple benefits to schools. The system will help improve attendance and time management thereby enabling students to improve their academic performance. Real-time tracking of students will also enhance the safety of students because it will be easy to keep tabs on all visitors and block them from interacting with students without permission.

References

Gogoi, M., & Hazarika, M. (2017). Application of Programme Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) in Educational Management. Asian Journal of Research in Social Sciences and Humanities, 7(10), 155-160.

Handrick, L. (2018). 7 Best Employee Time Clocks for 2018. Retrieved from https://fitsmallbusiness.com/employee-time-clock/

Tirmann, V., & Tăbuşcă, A. (2016). UNIVERSITY STUDENT ATTENDANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM. Journal of Information Systems & Operations Management, 10(1).

 
Do you need high quality Custom Essay Writing Services?