Smart software monitors student emotions

‘This work is part of a larger effort to develop artificial intelligence software to teach students computer science,’ said Dr Kristy Boyer, an assistant professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of a paper on the work. ‘The program, JavaTutor, will not only respond to what a student knows, but to each student’s feelings of frustration or engagement. This is important because research shows that student emotion plays an important role in the learning process.’

According to NCSU, the researchers used the automated Computer Expression Recognition Toolbox (CERT) program to evaluate facial expressions of 65 college students engaged in one-on-one online tutoring sessions.

The researchers found that CERT was able to identify facial movements associated with learning-centered emotions, such as frustration or concentration – and that the automated program’s findings were consistent with expert human assessments more than 85 per cent of the time.

The researchers also had the students report how effective they felt the tutorial was, and tested the students before and after each tutoring session to measure how much they learned.