Quote:
Originally Posted by Kedishen
...I am making a Student database, which includes an attendance register.
I would like to set the input form up to resemble how a normal paper-based register would look (for ease of use).
Name Week1 Week2 Week3...
...
Hi. It is not really practicable to mimic the paper attendance register in the way you describe. You would find it very difficult to prepare a generic data entry form which could accurately reflect the relationships between the underlying data, and the potential range of start and end times for each class. You need to consider how practicable it would be to set up any kind of form that involved so many direct and indirect relationships (such as academic year, course, course year, year group, subject, subject week, room, tutor, student, and time period).
Commercial systems print attendance registers in a standard grid-based format for lecturers to complete - but they don't try to mimic this approach for data entry. Attendance is simply entered one week at a time.
The cleverest approach to student attendance recording I've seen is in one major commercial system in use in the UK where users only need to enter
absences or lateness. Attendance is taken as a default, as for most classes the majority of students do attend. In the best case, when there are no absences to record, the data entry operator simply presses one button to confirm that all students attended and the class register instance is updated accordingly.
By the way, continuous forms do not repeat horizontally.
Hope this gives you some ideas for ways forward.
-Stewart
