I teach cohorts. Right now I’m teaching a course on AI and machine learning. My students are a mix of people who are about to graduate and professionals who already have jobs. They are smart, busy people, and I enjoy teaching them.
Every class used to start the same way. I opened the spreadsheet, read out each name, and waited for each person to say “present.”
It felt weird. These are adults, and some of them already work. Calling out their names one by one felt like being back in school. It also took time away from teaching.
Some days I skipped it at the start and said I would do it at the end. That didn’t go well. I ended up rushing through the names in the last few minutes, before everyone left.
On other days I shared a Google Form link with the class, asked everyone to fill it in if they were there, and begged them to be truthful. Anyone with the link could say yes from anywhere, even from home. And after class, I still had to copy every name from the form into the register myself.
Every week I had the same three choices: call out names like a school teacher, rush it at the end, or send a form that anyone could fill in from home.
I kept thinking, this should be easy. Everyone in my class has a phone with a camera, and my register is already a Google Sheet. Why was I still typing every P myself?
So I built Presently, first for my own class.
Now when I walk in, I press Start class on my phone and show the QR code on the projector. Students scan it from their seats and type their student ID, and a P appears in the sheet next to their name. I don’t call out a single name. I just teach.
There’s no rush at the end, because check-in stays open for the whole class. If someone comes in late, they scan when they sit down, and I don’t have to stop.
The Google Form problem was the one I cared about most, so Presently checks three things. The QR code changes every 30 seconds, so a photo sent to a friend at home stops working within a minute. The phone has to be within 100 metres of me. And each student ID works on only one phone, so nobody can check in for a friend.
My students only need their phone camera and their student ID. They don’t install an app or make an account. Later, they can open “Your attendance” on the same phone to see every class where they were marked present.
I built this for my own cohort, and it’s free for anyone to use. If you teach, you have probably had the same problems: the form link, or the rush at the end of class. Try Presently in your next class, and let your students mark themselves present.