An investigation on the viability of using IoT for student safety and attendance monitoring in Iraqi primary schools

Abstract

In Iraq, many student abduction cases are reported due to the lack of safety mechanisms and the lack of law enforcement. Educational institutions such as primary schools are looking for a better mechanism to monitor the student attendance so that the safety of the students can be better monitored. Currently, student attendance in schools is done in a traditional manner where the teachers will manually check and record the attendance of students in their class. However, this traditional method has many drawbacks such as it can only be taken at certain time interval and therefore cannot monitor students in real time. The main aim of this study is to investigate the viability of using Internet of Things (IoT) approach to monitor student attendance and their presence in the school compound in real time in order to ensure their safety. A quantitative data collection using questionnaire with 113 working staff from Iraqi primary schools was conducted to identify the current challenges of student monitoring and the viability of using IoT to address these challenges. The results of the questionnaire analysis show that the use of IoT could improve the safety environment of primary schools by being able to monitor student attendance accurately in real time. © 2005 - 2016 JATIT & LLS. All rights reserved.