June 27, 2008
Facial-Recognition Software Could Give Valuable Feedback to Online Professors
Many professors who teach online complain that they have no way of seeing whether their far-away students are following the lectures — or whether the students have fallen asleep at their desks. But researchers at the University of California at San Diego say they have a solution. They recently tested a system that can detect facial expressions of online students and determine when they find the material difficult, so that cues could be sent to the professors telling them to slow down.
Jacob Whitehill, a doctoral student at the university working on the research, presented results from the experiment this week at the Intelligent Tutoring Systems 2008 conference in Montreal.
In the experiment, eight subjects were shown short video clips of lectures while a Web cam tracked their facial expressions — looking for smiles, blinks, raised eyebrows, and the like. The subjects were then asked to report how difficult they found each section, and to take a quiz on the material. Mr. Whitehill says that the system correctly detected when students were having trouble (the most reliable indicator: students blinked less when they were struggling to understand).
The system could be used to give valuable feedback to professors teaching online, says Mr. Whitehill. “It’s not going to be perfect by any means,” he says, but it’s better than no student feedback at all. “Professors say that they can’t see the students. This could do it for them automatically.” —Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Friday June 27, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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And how would does this improve/enhance learning???
— Annie Jun 28, 09:45 AM #
Why are these instructors lecturing online? There are much more effective strategies. Perhaps the research should focus more on how to help instructors better understand how to teach online.
— Laurie Jun 28, 11:23 AM #
This may work with synchronous online/ distance learning where everyone is online simultaneously, unless there is some way of recording the interaction at any given time. Most online courses are asynchronous, so this is seems very limited to me.
— Lee Jun 28, 11:52 AM #
I have the same problem wondering how to improve my method of smacking students upside the head with a dead mackerel. I hit them again and again and only 25% of the time does it work. I have applied for a grant to study the effectiveness of mackerel smacking pedagogy as to determine the most opportune time to strike students on the head with Scombridae. I hope that a new RFID chip in the mackerel will determine rates of velocity, impact vectors, and depth of force effectiveness to analyze when my students benefit from the kinesthetic pedagogy or when I should just resort to traditional methods. I am optimistic and am assured that I a the leader in this field. Watch out MLA, here I come! (My field is in literary pesceology but I am interdisciplinary so I am more marketable)
— Billl Poisson Jun 28, 05:07 PM #
Bill, try a flounder, I think it will up your success rate.
— Kyle David Jun 30, 05:11 PM #