Project Overview
This is a mobile attendance tracking app built for PASS (Peer Assisted Study Sessions) leaders at the University of the South Pacific. The app lets leaders to quickly and accurately record attendance by scanning student ID cards.
Project Motivation
PASS leaders facilitate group study sessions for students enrolled in challenging courses. A key part of their role involves taking attendance at each session and submitting records to the PASS Coordinator. The traditional manual process of recording attendance was slow, error-prone, and tedious.
Having served as a PASS leader for three courses, I encountered these challenges myself. To address them, I developed PASSport, which enables leaders to take attendance in seconds by scanning student IDs.
Project Details
PASSport is built with React Native and Expo, targeting Android devices. The app follows a file-based routing structure using Expo Router and features a clean, minimal UI that respects the user’s system theme (light/dark mode). The core features of this app include:
Barcode Scanning - The camera-based scanner validates student IDs and signature barcodes. A two-step scan flow ensures authenticity, first the student ID, then the matching signature.
Session Management - Leaders can start sessions for their courses. The app prevents duplicate sessions within the same hour and tracks attendance counts for each session.
Course Management - Leaders can add, edit, delete, and switch between multiple courses they are leading.
Attendance Export - Data can be exported to password-protected Excel files with SHA-256 checksums for integrity verification, ready for submission to coordinators.
Offline Support - All data is stored locally using SQLite with Drizzle ORM, requiring no internet connection during sessions.
Project Outcomes
PASSport successfully digitizes the attendance workflow for PASS leaders. The two-step barcode scan (ID + signature) adds a layer of verification that prevents students from marking attendance for others. The offline-first architecture ensures the app works reliably during study sessions regardless of network conditions. The Excel export feature with password protection and checksums provides coordinators with tamper-evident records.
Leaders in STEMP and I ran a parallel approach by using PASSport alongside the existing attendance process during the second semester of 2025. This allowed the system to be evaluated in real sessions. As a result, PASSport is now in the works to be adopted full-time in first semester of 2026, with me leading student training and onboarding for the app.