STUDIO NEXT: Source / Design / Build: Eye Tracker

THE USE OF EYE-TRACKING IN EDUCATION

Ben Jewett

Gareth Roberts

Abstract:

In many Universities, limits in staff numbers and funding dictate the range of subjects that can be offered. While departments hope to cater electives that may interest the majority of the students within a given discipline, there are often cases where a student wishes to study a subject outside the offerings of the college. Currently, this is usually limited to students taking physical classes with neighboring colleges that have reciprocal agreements, but what if the interests of the student is not studied in the immediate vicinity?

To this end, we are proposing an on-line learning environment that allows students to actively participate in classes held by renowned Professors over long distance. Unlike other long-distance or online courses, we propose that this system will be enhanced through eye-tracking technology in the following distinct ways.

1. Long-distance learning students would be able to participate in live lectures, and through eye-tracking would be able to simultaneously write in a notepad and select options on the interface to virtually raise their hand to ask questions to the lecturer

2. The lecturer, say an astronomy professor, would be able to use eye tracking to activate functions on their interface without the need to use a mouse or stand at a lectern.

3. Reading assignments would utilize eye-tracking technology in the PDF reader to monitor if readings are completed, and could feed-back information to the professor about areas that were confusing to students so these issues could be addressed at the next lecture.

User Profi le:

Steve is an Astronomy Professor at a big college in California. With the comforts of a large expensive telescope he can conduct effective research. His lectures involve plenty of pictorial content and readings, which he prefers to display digitally to the class. He assigns homework and readings to over one-hundred and fi fty students and maintains tests and quizzes.

Technology:

For this system, we intend the major hardware will be laptop computers. Current laptops usually include a web-cam, however only a few have infrared LED’s. However, as this system proves it’s merits, we believe laptop manufacturers will begin to include this capability in their platforms.

Using a wide telescopic lens and faceial recognition software, the system will be able to track the eyes of the user without the need for the head to be stationary, adding to the usability of the system.

The PDF document reader software would need to be able to access the internent to send the vital data back to the professor, and will need to be able to store this data for later transmission if the student downloads the documantation and reads it off-line.

Existing Systems:

In recent years, the demand for education services that are fl exible for the student have increased dramatically. With the advancement of fi le-sharing software over the internet, many institutions have turned to on-line education to fi ll this need, although at the cost of direct interaction between students, their professors and their peers.

In most cases, these systems allow the user to access on-line documentation in the form of PDF’s or Powerpoint documents that cover one lecture topic, and leave the onus on the student to read the material. Other systems allow the student to access pre-recorded lectures in either audio or video, allowing them to see an actual lesson that was presented. In either case, the information is static, and they have no way to interact with it.

To fulfi ll the homework component of given courses, many institutions turn to individual papers or quizzes that the student submits electronically. Others introduce some group work between students utilizing fi le-sharing software such as base-camp, and let the students organize times when they can meet online to work collaboratively. Another common mode of assessment is the use of on-line multiple-choice tests that a student has to take within a certain amount of time.

As can be seen, there are a lot of factors that can lead an institution to question the legitimacy of a course taken online. Aside from group work, it is exceptionally easy for a student to cheat on on-line tests, whether they have a text-book in front of them and simply look-up answers, or they access the internet to search for responses, or even if they have another individual complete the test for them. To this end, we have attempted to improve the system through the use of eye-tracking augmentation.

Our new proposed system using eye-tracking has several key advantages over the existing systems:

1. If they choose to, students have the opportunity to interact with their professor and fellow students in a more organic way

2. The lecturer can give eye-tracking control to a student through their laptop, allowing everyone to follow what the student is referencing in a given presentation

3. The lecturer can switch between modes on their computer to allow a remote student to ask a question etc. without needing to be at their computer.

4. The on-line homework reading assignments can feedback data to the lecturer to confi rm if students have read the document, or if there was an area of the document that was less-easily understood and thus could be addressed in further lectures.

Possible Complications:

Although the new system improves on the existing model, there are still some shortcomings that need to be addressed. The method of switching control of the eye-tracking functions within a lecture setting to an individual in the theater or participating online would be complex, and would require a lot of research and development to come to fruition. Likewise, the programming to allow PDF homework that would allow feedback to be given to the lecturer autonomously would be complex, and would need to compensate for scenarios where students would like to save the document to their laptop and read it while off-line. There would need to be thorough research conducted to be able to differentiate between areas of interest and areas of complication when reading the PDF documents if correct feedback was to be presented.