Tag Archives: attendance monitoring

WATCH THIS SPACE: ATTENDANCE MONITORING

Will the attendance monitoring system – you know the one, where half of your seminar is wasted by students pointing their phones at a box in the corner of the ceiling trying to make it register their attendance – show any signs of improving? Who knows. But subtext also understands that some slightly uglier means of monitoring the attendance of international students has been making waves. We’ll reveal more on these developments come 2018-19.

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2017/10/12/big-brother-is-not-watching-you/

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/2017/11/09/big-brother-is-still-not-watching-you/

SHART ATTACK

FROM: Alan Pushers, Head of Technological Innovations and Solutions
TO: Mike M. Shart, VC, Lune Valley Enterprise University (LuVE-U).
SUBJECT: The next stage

Dear Mike,

Following the seamless introduction of the Student Location University Geomonitoring Systems, I am pleased to say that moving forward we can move forward on the plan discussed at the Special Projects Committee to cascade this system to staff. As you know, we have little idea what staff are up to most of the time, where they spend their time, how productive they are being, even what value they are adding to LuVE-U. All this will now change with the data we will get from Productive Activity Time Surveillance System.

Before rolling it out, we did a quick test run of the system last week on a random staff member. Here are the results:

RESULTS FOR: Hewlett Venkklinne – Director of Public Disapproval Modification.
Total time spent – Location
4.5 hours – Local BMW second hand dealer
3.9 hours – Trafford Centre
1.4 hours – At his desk
7.2 hours – Senior Leadership Lounge
1.1 hours – Trapped in wheelchair accessible toilet when door wouldn’t open and no one responded to the alarm
4.9 hours – Googled: ‘Tips and Hairstyles for Balding Men.’
1.3 hours – Toni and Guys
0.5 hours – Googled: ‘How to take a screenshot on a Mac.’
7.5 hours – Browsing: Vogue Magazine models
1.6 hours – Google Images: Students in graduation robe
3.3 hours – Browsing: wikihow.com/photoshop-basics
4.5 hours – Browsing www.beingaleader.net

Alan.

***

FROM: Mike M. Shart, VC, Lune Valley Enterprise University (LuVE-U)
TO: Hewlett Venkklinne – Director of Public Disapproval Modification.

Hewlett,

Photoshopping supermodels onto the prospectus and marketing materials are we? Don’t deny it, I know you are.

Genius strategy – you’re worth every penny.

Mike.

PS. Do you think I should keep using Viviscal?

BIG BROTHER IS STILL NOT WATCHING YOU

We are informed by the powers that be that there continues to be a number of unexpected teething problems with the new attendance monitoring system. How long are ‘teething problems’ supposed to last? subtext understand that these ‘teething problems’ continue to mean teaching staff spending a not inconsiderable amount of time finding out who is not and who is in the lecture theatre – sometimes half the actual session. And then, the surveillance machinery overrides what you spent your precious teaching time inputting. And of course there are some students who are genuinely concerned about what is going to happen to them when they are not being picked up by the surveillance machine.

BIG BROTHER IS NOT WATCHING YOU

First week of term and the iLancaster monitoring and surveillance machine kicks into gear. Well, no.

Cue lots of students randomly pointing their phones at any and all boxes in the corner of the seminar rooms. And lecturers hastily scrambling around for bits of paper and a pen to compile a register. Brave new world indeed.