Using RFID Technology to Track Attendance

The relationship between class attendance and academic performance continues to be of interest. The most common methods of tracking attendance, however, have their shortcomings and biases. We provide researchers with a method to collect unbiased and reliable attendance data. Late arrivals and early departures can also be recorded with ease, allowing researchers to evaluate these behaviors as well. Our method is intended to collect valuable attendance data at a minimal cost of time or money: setup takes 10-20 seconds per student initially, with no time lost subsequently, and the monetary cost is less than 29¢ for each student. An Excel-based version is discussed. Software code is provided, open-source, for instructors to implement.