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Hi Becka,

Does your university have scanners by the door of each teaching room, where students "register" their attendance by swiping their ID cards? If so, you might investigate (with your MIS folk) the possibility of acquiring a hand-held  (portable) version of these scanners, and assigning it to a "virtual" Learning Development Centre.

We did this at a place I previously worked, and it worked well. The students'  details, along with date and time, were captured, and stored on the hand held device. Every couple of weeks the MIS folk downloaded everything into a spreadsheet for us (and merged in relevant student/course details from the main university database) and so we could query the data any which way. We also devised a clever way to scan in details about what the student came to the LD session for.

The advantage is that this worked off the back of existing university record systems. The disadvantage was the cost of buying into this high-end system.

Some may recall the presentation by Eddie Naylor et al at the 2013 ALDinHE Conference, which described and discussed this in detail

Best wishes,

David