How to attract students’ visual attention

Roberto Araya, Danyal Farsani, Josefina Hernández

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

Attracting students’ visual attention is critical in order for teachers to teach classes, communicate core concepts and emotionally connect with their students. In this paper we analyze two months of video recordings taken from a fourth grade class in a vulnerable school, where, every day, a sample of 3 students wore a mini video camera mounted on eyeglasses. We looked for scenes from the recordings where the teacher appears in the students’ visual field, and computed the average duration of each event. We found that the student’s gaze on the teacher lasted 44.9% longer when the teacher gestured than when he did not, with an effect size (Cohen’s d) of 0.69. The data also reveals different effects for gender, subject matter, and student Grade Point Average (GPA). The effect of teacher gesturing on students with a low GPA is higher than on students’ with a high GPA. These findings may have broad significance for improving teaching practices.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAdaptive and Adaptable Learning - 11th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2016, Proceedings
EditorsKatrien Verbert, Mike Sharples, Tomaž Klobučar
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages30-41
Number of pages12
ISBN (Print)9783319451527
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2016
Externally publishedYes
Event11th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2016 - Lyon, France
Duration: 13 Sep 201616 Sep 2016

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume9891 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference11th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2016
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityLyon
Period13/09/1616/09/16

Keywords

  • Classroom practices
  • Eye gaze
  • Hand gestures
  • Video analysis

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