A gaze-based learning analytics model: in-video visual feedback to improve learner's attention in MOOCs

In the context of MOOCs, “With-me-ness” refers to the extent to which the learner succeeds in following the teacher, specifically in terms of looking at the area in the video that the teacher is explaining. In our previous works, we employed eye-tracking methods to quantify learners’ With-me-ness and showed that it is positively correlated with their learning gains. In this contribution, we describe a tool that is designed to improve With-me-ness by providing a visual aid superimposed on the video. The position of the visual aid is suggested by the teachers’ dialogue and deixis, and it is displayed when the learner’s With-me-ness is under the average value, which is computed from the other students’ gaze behavior. We report on a user-study that examines the effectiveness of the proposed tool. The results show that it significantly improves the learning gain and it significantly increases the extent to which the students follow the teacher. Finally, we demonstrate how With-me-ness can create a complete theoretical framework for conducting gaze based learning analytics in the context of MOOCs.

Expanding Eye-Tracking Methods to Explain the Socio-Cognitive Effects of Shared Annotations

Andrea Mazzei

Social technologies are leading to transformations in education, by empowering the way learners connect to each other, by introducing new means for teaching and learning and by reshaping the way knowledge is delivered. Annotating texts is a learning strategy that is spontaneously adopted by learners during lectures or while reading text books. Students still individually take annotations on paper, that tend to be thrown away when the learning goal is achieved. Students also engage occasionally in the spontaneous practice of note sharing. Our work explores experimentally the benefits of note-taking and note-sharing behaviour. First, we study how sharing student-annotated instructional texts can improve learning, enriching an experimental approach with a new eye tracking method. Second, we conduct experiments on computer-mediated note sharing in the classroom. Our results demonstrate the virtuous circle of note-taking: both annotating while reading and reading annotated documents lead to a better learning achievement. In the first experimental study, we measure if the presence of annotations, on an instruc- tional text, can influence the reading pattern, and how visual features of annotations can elicit the reader’s attention. To complement the results concerning learning and reading comprehension, we look into the readers’ gaze patterns, to explain how the students’ learning outcome relates to reading annotated texts. For this purpose, we design a novel eye tracker, that can be used to study reading and note taking in unconstrained experimental settings. This eye tracking system is based on a systematic error correction procedure that exploits the appearance similarity between the annotated texts and the spatial distribution of the fixation points. We show that this method can extract accurate gaze measures without introducing experimental constraints, that could disturb the note taking process and affect the readers’ comprehension. In the second study, we move from a controlled experimental setting to the classroom. We discuss how the use of technology can facilitate a spontaneous transition from personal to shared annotations and support students in the learning process. We complement the analysis by reporting a friendship bias in browsing the shared annotated material. We further speculate on the potential of shared annotations in triggering adaptations of the instructional material and teaching workflow. These two studies provided an insightful understanding of the effects of student-generated annotations on reading comprehension, and the underlying impact on a community of learners. The obtained findings should inspire further experimentation on social learning environments, meant to facilitate knowledge sharing through shared annotations and their diffusion within educational institutions.

EPFL2013

MOOC Learning in Spontaneous Study Groups: Does Synchronously Watching Videos Make a Difference?

Pierre Dillenbourg, Nan Li, Afroditi Skevi, Himanshu Verma, Guillaume Zufferey

Study groups are common approaches for students to study together at schools. However, little is known about how this approach is suited to MOOC based learning, where learners watch and discuss MOOC lecture videos in a collaborative manner. Watching MOOCs with peers creates learning experiences that blend the way students learn in classroom with learning through a computer: Students get a chance to “pause” the professor as well as to discuss with other learners. In this paper, we explore this type of MOOC-based learning. Findings from our longitudinal study on spontaneous collocated MOOC study groups suggest that groups tend to stick to a certain kind of study style. A strong positive relationship was found between how often students pause and replay the videos and the synchronicity among groups. Further, synchronous groups tended to perceive better group learning experience, in terms of self-assessed quality and mutual participation. Future MOOC designers as well as schools that offer courses in a flipped classroom format can use the insights to provide guided support for group learners of MOOCs.

P.A.U. Education2014

Gaze Analysis methods for Learning Analytics

Kshitij Sharma

Eye-tracking had been shown to be predictive of expertise, task-based success, task-difficulty, and the strategies involved in problem solving, both in the individual and collaborative settings. In learning analytics, eye-tracking could be used as a powerful tool, not only to differentiate between the levels of expertise and task-outcome, but also to give constructive feedback to the users. In this dissertation, we show how eye-tracking could prove to be useful to understand the cognitive processes underlying dyadic interaction; in two contexts: pair program comprehension and learning with a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). The first context is a typical collaborative work scenario, while the second is a special case of dyadic interaction namely the teacher-student pair. We also demonstrate, using one example experiment, how the findings about the relation between the learning outcome in MOOCs and the students' gaze patterns can be leveraged to design a feedback tool to improve the students' learning outcome and their attention levels while learning through a MOOC video. We also show that the gaze can also be used as a cue to resolve the teachers' verbal references in a MOOC video; and this way we can improve the learning experiences of the MOOC students. This thesis is comprised of five studies. The first study, contextualised within a collaborative setting, where the collaborating partners tried to understand the given program. In this study, we examine the relationship among the gaze patterns of the partners, their dialogues and the levels of understanding that the pair attained at the end of the task. The next four studies are contextualised within the MOOC environment. The first MOOC study explores the relationship between the students' performance and their attention level. The second MOOC study, which is a dual eye-tracking study, examines the relation between the individual and collaborative gaze patterns and their relation with the learning outcome. This study also explores the idea of activating students' knowledge, prior to receiving any learning material, and the effect of different ways to activate the students' knowledge on their gaze patterns and their learning outcomes. The third MOOC study, during which we designed a feedback tool based on the results of the first two MOOC studies, demonstrates that the variables we proposed to measure the students' attention, could be leveraged upon to provide feedback about their gaze patterns. We also show that using this feedback tool improves the students' learning outcome and their attention levels. The fourth and final MOOC study shows that augmenting a MOOC video with the teacher's gaze information helps improving the learning experiences of the students. When the teacher's gaze is displayed the perceived difficulty of the content decreases significantly as compared to the moments when there is no gaze augmentation. In a nutshell, through this dissertation, we show that the gaze can be used to understand, support and improve the dyadic interaction, in order to increase the chances of achieving a higher level of task-based success.