Attendance history
Daily marks remain editable and feed the later review flow.
Faculty pilot
An Android workspace built around the work instructors repeat every week.
Acadence brings class context, attendance, student records, submissions, notes, roster imports, and absenteeism follow-up into one instructor-focused workflow.
AcadenceInstructor workspace
- Built for
- Faculty handling multiple classes and recurring records
- Platform
- Android · Java · Firebase
- Core
- Classes · Attendance · Records · Students · Notes
- Current stage
- Controlled faculty-pilot hardening
- Kurt's role
- Product design, Android engineering, Firebase, workflow design, QA
No real student information is shown in this case study.
Why it exists
Teaching work is connected. The tools around it often are not.
An instructor can move between a class roster, attendance records, an online gradebook, student follow-up, schedules, and personal notes in the same day. The difficult part is rarely one form. It is keeping the context consistent while switching between them.
Acadence treats the class as the center of that work. Instead of copying every school system, it focuses on the instructor-side tasks that benefit from being available together on a phone or tablet.
Instructor workflow
Class context stays with the task.
The product is organized around the things an instructor actually needs to do before, during, and after class—not around a long list of database screens.
- 01Open the class
Schedule, section, subject context, roster state, and class actions are available from the same place.
- 02Take attendance
Mark the session quickly, keep editable history, and preserve attendance as the source for later absenteeism review.
- 03Review records and submissions
Keep term-aware class records and activity/submission information tied to the correct class instead of loose student rows.
- 04Follow up with students
Profiles, absence history, class context, and action notes make repeated concerns easier to review without rebuilding the context each time.
- 05Keep teaching notes nearby
General, section-linked, and pinned notes support the small reminders and decisions that do not belong in a gradebook.
Data model
The roster decides who belongs to a class.
Importing grades is convenient only when the destination is trustworthy. Acadence keeps the class roster authoritative and treats gradebook data as information to reconcile against that roster—not permission to silently create new students.
PSCS class rosterAuthoritative student list for the selected classSource of truth
Acadence classSelected subject, academic year, semester, and rosterLocked context
Attendance & recordsWrites stay inside that class roster.
eLMS gradebookSubject/workspace markers are validated before reconciliation.
Reconcile before writeMatched students can receive activity/submission data. Unmatched or mismatched rows are blocked for review.Fail closed
From record to action
Attendance becomes something the instructor can act on.
Acadence does not stop at storing present and absent marks. It turns attendance history into reviewable cases while keeping the original attendance records as the source.
Class-level review
Per-class dashboards surface absences, repeated cases, and follow-up state where the instructor already has class context.
Instructor-wide report
A combined reporting view can summarize cases across the active academic workspace and term instead of forcing separate reports per subject.
Action tracking
Needs Action is prioritized, while structured action and remarks choices keep follow-up consistent and reviewable.
Engineering
The hard part is protecting the workflow when data, devices, and screens change.
The pilot work focuses less on adding features and more on preventing the kinds of errors that make an instructor stop trusting the app.
Conservative record writes
Class identity, roster state, subject, academic year, and semester are checked before sensitive imports or record writes. When the destination cannot be established safely, the operation is blocked instead of guessed.
Design principleCorrect class before convenient syncNo eLMS-only student creation
Roster-aware reconciliation
Gradebook activity data is useful, but it is not allowed to redefine the class. Reconciliation reads the selected roster first and only writes matched activity/submission data into that protected class context.
Protected boundaryRoster remains authoritativeMismatches require review
Student-directory performance
Repeated identity scans and UI-thread work were replaced with indexed grouping, cached visible results, background processing, debounced search, and asynchronous list updates so larger rosters remain responsive.
Performance workLess repeated scanningLess UI-thread work
Lifecycle and crash hardening
Loading, navigation, imports, and callbacks are guarded against stale state and invalid destinations. Privacy-safe diagnostics capture enough timing and crash context to investigate pilot failures without exposing class content publicly.
Pilot focusPhone + tablet behaviorRecoverable failures
Product decisions
Useful during class, not only while sitting at a desk.
- Phone + tablet
- The interface is designed around the devices an instructor is likely to carry between rooms, with larger layouts used where they genuinely help.
- Class first
- Students, records, attendance, and imports keep the selected class visible so actions are less likely to drift into the wrong context.
- Fast daily actions
- Attendance, search, notes, and follow-up are optimized for repeated use rather than one-time setup screens.
- Quiet diagnostics
- Pilot telemetry focuses on timings, counts, versions, and failure breadcrumbs instead of collecting the class content that the diagnostic does not need.
Current stage · Faculty pilot
The goal now is trust under real teaching conditions.
Acadence is being prepared for controlled faculty use, not presented as a finished school-wide platform. The current work is validating roster/gradebook boundaries, device and lifecycle behavior, performance with real class sizes, and the day-to-day flow between attendance, records, students, and notes.
What the pilot is meant to prove
- The right class stays the right destination.
- Imports cannot silently create or move students.
- Common classroom actions remain fast on phone and tablet.
- Failures can be diagnosed without exposing student information.
- The workflow reduces repeated instructor admin instead of adding another system to manage.