A ‘basic’ system records ‘in’ and ‘out’ only. CaptureIT also records ‘in’ and ‘out’ with the big difference is that is also holds students’ expected work patterns for each planned day of attendance and not simply the times when they were in the building. By knowing the expected work patterns CaptureIT is able to accurately calculate the times that the UKBA will regard and accept as ‘attendance’ versus the times that the student may have been on site. The two are very different, for example:-
Imagine a student has planned lectures from 09:30 to 12:30 and then 13:30 to 16:30. This represents 6 hours of planned lecture attendance. It is onlythese 6 hours that the UKBA is interested in, yet the ‘basic’ system will show 7 hours of ‘on-site’ time. CaptureIT will automatically discount the lunch period from the time calculation – the ‘basic’ system does not, meaning non-compliance. (Note, even if you can set lunch period in the ‘basic’ system it will still be wrong)
In practice, of course, students will not be arriving exactly on 9:00 or leaving exactly at 16:30. Being more realistic, imagine that a student clocks in at 09:10 and leaves at 16:50. The ‘basic’ system will give attendance of 7hrs 40 minutes, whereas CaptureIT will correctly ignore the 20 minutes before and after the lecture periods, and ignore the lunch period, in giving the correct attendance of 6 hours. Again, the ‘basic’ system does not comply.
Image this situation. The student arrives 30 minutes late at 10:00 and then leaves 30 minutes early at 16:00. CaptureIT would, correctly, show 5 hours. The ‘basic’ system would credit 6 hours and the UKBA would not accept this.
With the ‘basic’ system you might try and overcome this by clocking for lunch breaks, but this again fails because the student may take just a five minute break. CaptureIT can be set to always deduct the full hour.
On the other side, there will be occasions where a class legitimately finishes, say 10 minutes ahead of its scheduled finish time with the tutor happy to release the class. CaptureIT can be set to count the full lecture length so that the student is not penalised. The ‘basic’ system would credit the lower number of hours. This facility is critical in cases where a student’s scheduled hours are 15, which is the UKBA minimum. Using the ‘basic’ system it would look as if the student could be reported but for the wrong reasons.
Finally, you will know that you have to have systems in place to ensure that students do not simply clock in for the day and then abscond until clock out time – they actually have to attend. CaptureIT can assist with this with automatic lecture/course printouts for the tutor to use in checking all students are in class. By adopting our ‘headcount approach’ you will save a considerable amount of time in every lecture carrying out the traditional ‘naming of persons’. This method of registration will also identify the lecturer concerned. If required, our lunchtime clocking feature provides further confirmation that a student was still on-site, whilst adjusting for any length of clocked lunch break.