The idea that jumps out now is that impliments NFC but the more I look into this, the more I’ve found that it’s already used in multiple sectors. Banking, for example we now have contactless cards, there are some schools mostly seeming to be in Sweden and America that have tried an NFC system. The problem I have now is trying to make this original as one of my final points of research is pretty much the idea I had.
How does NFC work?
http://www.nearfieldcommunication.org/benefits.html
Contactless Payments
The most well-known use of NFC technology is for contactless payment. Customers can swipe their smartphone over a card reader to make a purchase without fumbling through credit and debit cards or counting out cash.
Information Sharing
The small size of NFC tags and their lack of a battery, relying instead on radio frequency signals sent from a smartphone or other NFC compatible device to operate, let them go virtually anywhere.
These two main aspects of NFC are something I’d hope to implement into an organization. Using the university as the organisation I can think of a number uses for this technology. First of all ease of access when sharing information, in every ‘timetabled’ session students are required to sign in, the idea with this would be to remove the use of paper registers throughout the uni and implement NFC to let students sign in with a swipe of their student ID card. If a student loses their card one way that this could still work is if they have a smartphone compatible with NFC, could then be used to open a webpage where the student logs in and registers. Another thing that this could be used for is emailing colleagues and tutors, the idea would remove the ‘issue’ of not being able to contact people, allowing uni and personal accounts to be separate.
The second thing that I find important is the contactless part to NFC, we already have cards that open rooms at the uni but what if we could have it so instead of having to book a room and collect the card early we simply have to use our student ID to open rooms we are in, similar to media loans system we have now with equipment just untilize this for rooms.
How else could this improve uni?
I mentioned in a previous post about a reward system, in some module marking schemes attendence falls under “Professional Practice” and usually has around a 10% standing on part of the criteria. On occasions I haven’t signed a register or for other reasons not had chance to, however a system could e implementd to enter students that have an above average attendance score say 90%+ to be entered into a raffle or have some way of being credited for attending scheduled sessions. Adopting a contactless payment system into the caffertiras my also help, though we have use of contactless with cards and such we could remove the fee for card use. This could be done by using student cards as a pre-paid cards the downside to this is needing to carry loose change for other means such as vending machines etc.
One benefit of being able to use NFC on mobile when registering could be a that the lecture is set up to download or opened in a browser, however there are some problems with this one requires lecture notes to be uploaded before the lecture instead of after and also throws in a the added “worry” of data charges and draining the user’s battery.