DUTA Press Release, 22 Dec 2017

                                                                                                                         
The University has developed a Centralised Attendance App to mark students’ attendance and is pushing colleges to implement it. The DUTA Executive meeting held on 22 December deliberated the issue of implementation of Attendance App.

Over the past few years, Delhi University has witnessed mindless hurried “reforms”, which have only led to academic dilution and have adversely affected teaching-learning environment. The University’s attempt to implement Attendance App without discussing its need, cost and feasibility in the Academic Council and the Executive Council undermines the role of Statutory Bodies and is a new addition to the list of mindless experiments.

Internal Assessment and attendance system, which are currently operative, have been approved by the AC and the EC. The present system of attendance, wherein attendance of students is uploaded every month on the college website, is working satisfactorily. The students can systematically track their attendance. There is also 5% weightage to attendance in the Internal Assessment. The Attendance App, which is linked with time-tables of teachers, opens the window for marking attendance only during the real-time. There is no special/additional advantage to students if attendance is uploaded on a hourly/daily basis. It, however, certainly increases time and effort of teachers towards it. Over-focus on attendance cannot help towards raising quality. Rather, it will lead to mechanisation and over-regulation. The DUTA also fears that this hourly based monitoring will be used for surveillance and will become a handle to victimize teachers.

In few colleges where the Attendance App was experimented, the experience has been that teachers using the App are forced to also maintain paper records because of fear of loss of data. The cost of implementation of such a system was transferred to students. For example, in some colleges, not only several lakhs were spent on developing such Apps but tablets were also distributed to teachers. This has come from fees collected from students, which is totally unacceptable.

Also extra-curricular activities, seminars and festivals are an integral part of an undergraduate student’s life and are needed for holistic growth. The App based system would not be flexible to allow for rescheduling of classes or for taking extra classes to finish courses.

The DUTA has itself been concerned about accountability of all sections of University community and has made various suggestions in this regard. One of these, viz student-faculty committee was adopted by the Academic Council in 2003. Display of room time tables outside all labs and lecture rooms is another measure already in place. These should be implemented seriously by the University.

Instead of focusing on real issues which confront the University today, the administration is spending efforts and resources on a change which has no real bearing on the quality of education. The DUTA rejects implementation of App-based attendance system. The DUTA will engage with students on the matter and hold a joint action program against its implementation.