Open up an online discussion board during lecture so students can comment and ask questions in real-time. And/Or have a "lecture section rating system"; so after one section of the lecture is finished, students can vote on a scale of 1-10 for example their comprehension on the content that was just taught (this can be done with online voting systems - text voting apps/websites are out there too)

Some future ideas...

In the classroom: heart rate monitors to assess heart rate variability changes of the students throughout the lecture (to measure student engagement during the lecture)

Online lectures: data like when students fast forward, pause, or switch screens while the lecture is playing can be attained. Youtube has implemented these types of data recordings that are accessible to their uploaders to assess the quality of their videos with these quantitative data sets 

Hi Anthony, thanks for your contribution. In fact you propose a mixture of classical towards futuristic vision. For one side voting after classes (or after semester) is already implemented in many schools. Youtube data, as you mention, can also be an interesting measure of the interest from students. As for the future; the heart rate monitors could be provided by smartphones that register to a service while attending the class, those are close to be ready for use, maybe with the help of some fitness band (fashionable this days) that could provide that data. But then we need to clarify if we are looking for evaluation on attention, emotions or other cognitive process. For a start heart beat is linked to emotions, but don't seem the best way to measure emotional states (it can help). Physiological data on Galvanic skin response could be an interesting add in that direction.

Cheers,

Fernando

Dear Fernando,

I agree that Online discussion is nowadays one of the major contributions to evaluation of students.  It is not something extra ordinary that one finds students having difficutlies even on the eve of examinations.  However, I think that exactly at that moment it would be the time for knowledge to sink in for some students.  Each student has different study skills, different time periods for knowledge to sink in and different methods.  

Working with them Online involves time especially having large groups on a course.  However, it is rewarding when you find out that students are understanding and your message has been received.

Regards

Carmen

Dear Camilleri,

Thank you for your contribution. I agree with you, each student has different methodologies for study and for participating. In this question i was aiming at the live class room. Even knowing that online is much easier to assess students attention and emotions with text mining or even eye-tracking, once they have monitor/camera in front of them, we just need a consent and proper software. But i was thinking in the live classroom where you can have a lot of students and it is hard to notice if most of them still following you. Wouldn't it be interesting to have a real-time assessment, like a "thermometer" of students attention to the class?

Best regards,

Fernando

Dear Stefan,

Thanks for your contribution, yes you are right, knowledge transmission cannot be evaluated. But indirect methods can be used to measure... attention or emotional states. We cannot evaluate knowledge transmission (here we would have to look for Nonaka, the explicit and implicit knowledge, etc.) but we can measure the success of the teaching process. Again in an indirect forms which we need to observe carefully because students can pay attention and even feel motivated but learn few concepts in comparison to what would be considered success. Again success corresponds to a ruled statement by an institution or a teacher that can be evaluated in any sort of tests.

But if students are attentive to the class and they feel positively (e.g. activated, happy, etc) if they have no disability then the teaching process must be a success.

Pedagogues, psychologists and other specialists in those fields have a lot of research in those areas of teaching and knowledge transmission however i must say that my first question was aiming the technological setup that could be used. So i would rephrase in a new question.

Cheers,

Fernando

Hi Fernando, thats a thought provoking question.

I guess you would need some type of wireless mental activity sensor for each student to wear during class activities. Would need to understand which parts of the brain are active during optimal knowledge transmission, which is not my speciality but wouldn't be difficult to learn.

Here is a rough idea of the type of sensor I am suggesting, it would need to be modified but it may be a realistic starting point: http://vandrico.com/device/interaxon-muse

Something like this may put the responsibility back onto teachers and expose clear inadequacies in the education system. I can anticipate much opposition from the education systems hierarchy to such a device :).

Regards,

Reece

Hi Fernando, you question is quite a good one, I think...I have already started to imagine some information model of the knowledge exchange in the terms of complexity. On one axe you have sort if real-time meaning transmission. It is crazy... On the other(s) you have sort of meaning-complexity of the used concepts, grammatical rules and perhaps even phonological content and/or pictures/graphics. To be followed. Now, what does knowledge mean... I don't know. It depends on the purpose of the concrete model, no? Or one can take a convenient EOD definition?

Hi Reece, that could be a good approach, it seems somehow comfortable to wear (at least more than an EEG cap :). I have seen those devices in use for gaming and for remote control of robotic arms for disabled. The question has you properly mention is the attitude from the education system and the educators to be evaluated...

Your question about that "intrusion" in the educational system is also the motive for me to consider, something like eye-tracking (if computers were being used in school class or in training) and also, we can consider that fitness bands (e.g. Nike fuel, Fitbit, Jawbone, etc) are becoming popular, if they could perform some physiologic measures (e.g. heartbeat and GSR) why not used in evaluation of attention and mental stated during learning process?

Regards,

Fernando

Hi Velina, I see you are looking at the cognitive/formal aspects of knowledge transmission (it is so much easier to deal with devices :) but your approach is necessary even if we find the best devices to perform measurements, we would a methodology like you mention. From reading your answer i got the notion that those studies need to be confined to a region of interest that would enable a proper selection of contents phonological/pictures/graphics or other. Because it is different to evaluate a chemistry class from a philosophy class and if in the primary case you need to evaluate tangible knowledge (do the understand the process? do they assimilate a set of formulas) in other more abstract classes, like those of social sciences, it is necessary to use other parameters. 

Again I think that from your ideas and those of Reece (and me) we are reaching a point where there are two visions; the student centric vision, where we want to measure his attention, his emotional state (happy to be in school??) and maybe some other cognitive aspects. And on the other side your vision more focused in the knowledge transmission and in the teaching process. I guess you vision is the top one that enclosures all the process and can make use of available data from devices as part of the holistic evaluation framework. 

Anyway, since more than 2.000 years we still don't have a concise definition of knowledge and that makes hard to evaluate knowledge transmission. To be pragmatic i think knowledge transmission can only be evaluated against a set of requirements in the scope of a class or any other configuration of learning process.

Do you agree? :)

Regards,

Fernando

Hi Stefan, it seems that you created a futuristic teaching environment, that's impressing. I think that you already implemented some of the concepts that we are discussing. What we are clamming is not the need for "statistical analysis" but some strategy to openly apply those methods for different purposes and adaptable to different teaching environments. Also you have control over your environment as it is a small and restricted group, which is what would be desirable, unfortunately there are classes with huge number of students and without that proximity that you mention and that interesting setup of technological tools. In that sense would be interesting to reach a recommended setup (perhaps you have already an hypothetic setup to purpose for computer science) so that with such setup (or several types of setups) would be possible to purpose a knowledge transmission evaluation framework to be deployed in classrooms.

Regards,

Fernando

Hi Fernando... Do I agree, of course I do. Of course the meaning of a partial differential equation seems a bit differently transmitted than a philosophical resume. (I am thinking about the joke concerning the "scienes humaines et sciences inumaines") .

However one should start by something...  For example, the getting of meaning via visual supports like pictures and graphics v/s a text that explains? Control group - multimedia presentation!

I don't know... What I say presupposes that the knowledge transmission is some-how measured by means of the meaning/understanding that the subjects have acquired.

You have any ideas?

The real-time feedback of wearable sensors for research is profound.

I think students would be willing to wear classroom sensors if they knew their learning experience was going to improve. Would need to convince them the device was not reading their actual thoughts :)

The ethics requirements would be significant but doable. It would not suprise me if the ethics process took a year or two to satisfy all the requirements. This often discourages important research but it also reduces competition.

Instead of trying to define and measure 'knowledge' transfer, could keep it relatively simple and measure 'concentration'. Its a good problem to have but maybe such an enquiry has the potential to answer too many questions.

The Muse headset software would need to be modified to collect and collate data from multiple input devices. The company provides the software development kit: http://www.choosemuse.com/developer-kit/

Reece, don't you think that a informed consent form signed by them (grown students) would solve the problem?

My concern wouldn't be getting students to willingly participate. 

My only concern is the time it would take for the ethics application to be approved by the university's ethics committee. I'm not sure if this would go through as a HCI project, probably crossing into Psychology so may need multiple ethics approvals. Of course, this is not particularly difficult with a psychologist on the research team but it just takes time.