Facial recognition in schools tackles truancy

Sunday, 12 February 2012

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Education IT

By Diana Jumaat | 10 August 2010

Taiwan’s Chung Hua University has hatched a plan to introduce facial recognition technology to its roll call system in a bid to clamp down on truancy.

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The system enables the identification of a large number of students in real-time. It can even recognise individuals if they distort their faces.

The university also plans to use facial recognition to catch students who fall asleep in class. As soon as a student has begun to drift off, the system emits a flashing light to wake the student up.

There are no plans, however, to use other forms of facial recognition, such as expression readers and polygraph technology, to detect cheating, the university has said.

Universities in nearby Hong Kong are also considering facial recognition technology, not only to combat lecture-skipping but to make things easier for students.

At Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Professor David Zhang, Chair Professor of Intelligent Computing, Department of Computing, told FutureGov that facial recognition would be a more efficient way of granting students access to campus facilities than keys or access cards.

Facial recognition and biometric technologies such as palm print recognition will play a more important role in education in the future, Zhang said.

“Most young people are receptive to new ideas. The majority of people at university are young, and it is probable that in universities the willingness to accept facial recognition is higher. Besides, facial recognition technology is becoming more and more reliable and secure.”

But what do students think? Jackie Jeanette, a second year arts student at The Hong Kong University, told FutureGov: “Facial recognition would be a good idea. Then the least hard-working students will make an effort to attend lectures.”