Our challenge, your solutions
Light at the End of the Paper Tunnel
The aim is to make the digitization of certificates much more efficient. To this end, an application is to be developed that will make it possible to read out image or PDF files of certificates and to transfer the most important data in an XML format that conforms to the XHochschule standards.
Team: Automatic Diploma Digitalisation
Team members
Dobin Dietrich, Daniel Schmedes, Felix BittererMembers roles and background
Robin Dietrich, Consultant at ]init[ in the project XHochschule
- Original Idea and Python Development
Daniel Schmedes, Consultant at ]init[ in the project XHochschule
- Frontend Prototype Development
Felix Bitterer, Team member of the project „Digital Mobil @ FH Bielefeld“ at University of Applied Science Bielefeld
- Documentation and Quality Controll
Contact details
robin.dietrich@init.de, danielsamuel.schmedes@init.de, felix.bitterer@uni-bielefeld.de
Solution description
Within the framework of the Hackathon "#Semesterhack 2.0" of the Hochschulforum Digitalisierung on November 12 and 13, 2020, the team has already developed two prototypes:
- a demo for the graphical user interface, how the applicants* could use the application later on.
2. a first program that is able to read information from images of sample certificates. - A video entitled "Automatic certificate recognition - prototype demo" was created for better understanding. We would like to refer to it here in order to better understand the functionality of the programs.
Progress:
After the use of the program is demonstrated on a so-called "click dummy", a demonstration of text recognition and classification is given using a working prototype.
The prototype was written using the open source software Tesseract. This text recognition program was developed by Google, but is available for free use under an Apache 2.0 license.
With the version shown in the video, it is possible to extract data from two sample testimonials and return them as a "dictionary" object. A further processing of the data into the XHochschule XML standard should take place in a later process step.
Findings:
The prototype shows that the program is technically implementable and will produce the desired results with appropriate preparation. The technology used allows potentially large time savings for students and university administration.
However, the script shown will only work for certificates that are structured according to a certain scheme. In order to apply the program to other certificates, the reading function would have to be extended to include additional search patterns and, ideally, semantic plausibility checks of the data.
Solution context
The goal is to standardise student data exchange in the national higher education system so that the necessary interoperability between higher education institution systems (called Campus Management Systems) can be established for the media-consistent processing of future digital administrative services.
Solution target group
Students
- Alumni
- National students (MVP)
- International students (Complete product)
Universities (MVP)
- examination offices
- Student secretariats and services
- International Offices
Solution impact
Students can change between universities more easily, university administrations have more capacity to take care of important matters.
Solution tweet text
A light at the end of the Paper Tunnel: The #XHochschule Project is coming along https://youtu.be/RGzclgtpnWA #studentmobility #ozg #XBildung #tesseractSolution innovativeness
Updating the university application process using Machine-Learning based Text Recognition
Solution transferability
The solution is based on freely available software and is easily replicable for anyone with a basic grasp of Python
Solution sustainability
Automatic document processing can reduce the need for printing material on paper
Solution team work
We worked in a SCRUM-like Fashion
Downloads
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