Attention monitoring for synchronous distance learning

Abstract

In traditional classroom education the teacher can easily perceive or obtain the engagements of the students by observing them. Distance education is affected by the absence of such a feedback coming from expressions and behaviours of the students attending the lesson. Aiming at reducing the gap between these two learning modalities, the proposed system analyses student videos recorded by the cameras available on the laptops by which they are attending the lecture. This approach provides aggregated information on didactic efficacy to the teacher, avoiding the need of sharing student video recordings during the lecture. The teacher is therefore supported during the oral exposition of the lecture. The approach proposed in this study has been conceived as a software architecture running on background and locally on students’ personal computers. No sensitive data are shared over the network. It has been evaluated in two experimental sessions dedicated to a sensitivity preliminary evaluation of the proposed instrument and to the assessment of its didactic usefulness by volunteers, students and industrial employees. User evaluation reports, both on student and teacher side, a positive feedback. The discussion can bring to insights and new considerations about learning in general, which is nowadays so significantly forced to change due to COVID-19 pandemic and it could be intended to change even more in the direction of distance learning in the future.