Pu Lei, a university student in southwest China's Sichuan province, shows the "Super Class-skipping Assistant" app which he invented last month on his smartphone. [Photo: e23.com]

Recently, a smartphone app called "Super Class-Skipping Assistant" available on both iOS and Android platforms has become popular among university students in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong province, Nandu.com reports.

Users can use their Sina or Tencent Weibo microblogging accounts to log onto the app, and leave their contact number and university name. They also need to state their paybacks, such as offering a free dinner or cinema ticket, before publishing their request.

This free app will then help them find others in the same university to take attendance for them.

Pu Lei, a university student in southwest China's Sichuan province who invented the app last month, said he invented it not to encourage class-skipping, but to provide university students with more freedom in choosing the classes they'd like to take.

Until Tuesday, about 46,000 users had downloaded and registered the app, and the highest number of online users had risen to 8,400 people per day.

A student said he wanted to skip some boring classes because he needed more time to find a job and prepare for graduate school entrance exams, while other netizens would like to take attendance for others for free to experience the feeling of going back to university after graduation.

In order to deal with class-skipping behavior, Jinan University installed a teaching assistance system nicknamed "Super Roll-calling Machine" in some classrooms.

According to a teacher from the academic administration of the university, teachers can take attendance by asking students to type in their student number and password, and check students' progress by asking them to answer questions by pressing the buttons on the smartphone-shaped machine as well.

This system will be used in more classrooms after the trial operation period.