Researchers from the University of Alicante lead a project to improve teaching methods using Artificial Intelligence to study student reactions. As its promoters explain, "human beings interact in any sphere of society and education is no exception".
"We must work from the emotions of the students and modulate the training through artificial intelligence so that it is of quality", explains the professor of Educational Technology at the UA Rosabel Roig Vila. In her opinion, in the classroom, it is not only necessary to take into account the quality of the information transmitted, but also how it is expressed and how it is received from the emotional aspect.
Starting from this premise, the objective of the project is to advance in the transition towards intelligent learning and to optimize teaching, both online and face-to-face. To do this, researchers from the UA Faculty of Education and the Higher Polytechnic School are working on new software capable of detecting and analyzing the learning environment through artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning technologies.
"If we are able to measure the level of attention of the students, we can propose improvement strategies that have an impact on the interest in the content offered in class," says Miguel Cazorla, professor of Computer Engineering at the UA.
Thanks to the project, called MEEBAI, the researchers are going to analyze the complete learning cycle in the classroom. "It is one of the first experiences in which a work group can automatically monitor different variables with the ultimate goal of implementing a new methodology based on the results provided by AI to improve the teaching-learning environment", adds Roig vila.
In the first phase of the project, in which a multidisciplinary work team related to technology and education is currently immersed, a system has been designed to detect changes in the level of attention of students through the analysis of variables such as posture , gaze direction, emotions (positive, neutral or negative) and biometric data: heart rate and blood pressure.
"Once we capture all this information, we will be able to know the correlation that all these variables have with the level of attention, that is, if there are changes in the heart rate or the direction of gaze when a student is not paying attention," Cazorla exemplifies.
The researchers are going to capture the data in UA classrooms with cameras and different computational vision techniques, as well as activity bracelets to collect biometric data. "Thanks to AI, if the system detects that a large number of students are not paying adequate attention, the team of researchers in the area of education can redesign and test new methodologies that improve the teaching-learning process," says the Professor of Educational Technology.
The MEEBAI project is funded by the Prometeo program for excellence research groups (Prometeo 2022) of the Ministry of Innovation, Universities, Science and Digital Society of the Generalitat Valenciana. With an endowment of almost 600,000 euros, it is the only project related to Education Sciences subsidized in this edition of the Prometeo Program. The MEEBAI work team includes researchers from the universities of Alicante, Seville, Murcia, Rey Juan Carlos of Madrid and the University of Valencia.
