Aroon Deep

Hmm

hi

@Swato_ 🤦‍♂️

@ak47ksha Yes, every batch's CRs. Also, we haven't had an open house in a long long time. :P

@ak47ksha Will be doing email soon. Hopefully I can get a few more people esp. CRs to sign on.

But the ultimate question is this: do we choose a complex and buggy system whose creators had to find ways around its flaws, or a well-audited and simple-to-execute system that places trust and honour first and doesn't exclude anybody by design? I think the answer is clear.

The control needs to go back to the CR, and regular oversight needs to happen. Without oversight and decentralisation, and most importantly good faith; it is irrelevant how attendance is logged. Proxies will continue.

We need to revert to the old system. It was a better system, and it was a more flexible system. OTP attendance became useless the moment WhatsApp became a part of the process.

And now, the only person empowered to spot proxies is the academic coordinator. And the academic coordinator, unlike the CR, is not in the lecture halls to spot proxies

But not only that, attendance takes much longer now, and for the first time ever, legitimate attendees have a chance of being excluded. OTP entries exceeding the head count doesn't trigger a roll call. The lecturer's app doesn't make it easy to do this either.

The OTP attendance system was not accompanied by an increase in due diligence. Then again, toughening due diligence was not substantially tried in the previous system either. The obvious result is that proxies have remained the same in number, and possibly increased.

So to address this exclusion, lecturers routinely WhatsApp academic coordinators with details of students whose attendance didn't go through. And now, we're back in square one, but without the honour. The only deterrent is now surprise spot checks. And that was already a thing.

The OTP system has resulted in proxy instances that were previously impossible. Now people can give proxy from the comfort of their homes, since the app doesn't log location. This necessarily leads to the exclusion of some students who actually attend class.

The SAME principles and safeguards were in force in the previous system. The test of any computerisation and automation system boils down to two questions: i) how much entropy is being added to the system? ii) how much benefit is accrued by this increase in entropy?

Even in the new OTP system, it is humans who decide the outcome. Lecturers take the head count. Lecturers decide WHEN to take the head count. And academic coordinators determine, in the end, who can be considered present, based on OTPs and lecturer feedback via WhatsApp.

But the solution applied was not to reinforce compliance and more robustly deter proxy attempts. Rather, it was to replace the entire system of how attendance was logged.

Now, the problem with this system — the high rate of proxies — was not that it was structurally flawed. It was that there were compliance problems throughout the system, and few deterrents. It was impossible to flag most, let alone all, proxies.

And CRs were trusted to not taint the attendance sheet with counterfeit ticks, and to audit the completed sheet with a head count.

The old attendance system worked on an honour basis. If names were called out and ticked off on an attendance sheet, the college relied on the honour of the CRs and the honour of the students. Students would ideally only answer when their name was called out.

Every system that humans build is designed to serve humans, and is only as strong as its stakeholders' propensity to adhere to that system. What does that mean? Let me explain through illustration.