Some teachers see conversations in the classroom as disruptions
that need to stop. A professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA,
is using voice-recognition technology to understand if the noise could help
teachers gain a better understanding of what’s going on during class.
“I think one of the things we’re noticing is that even
if you are incorporating active learning, it’s very easy to focus on the
students at the front of the classroom raising their hands, and this data can
let teachers know whether they’ve got an equitable spread of participation
across the classroom,” Amy Ogan, assistant professor of human-computer
interaction at the CMU School of Computer Science, said in an article for eCampus News.
The technology provides instructors with a dashboard
that displays classroom activities in different lights. Sensors analyze sounds
in the room, not specific conversations. The colored lights give teachers
insight into whether they should change or continue their teaching approach.
The technology suggests classroom literature for teachers
on ways to better engage students who aren’t participating by sending messages
to their phones between classes. Ogan and her colleagues are also working on
ways to use cameras to distinguish patterns in the things students do while
they are in the classroom.
“We’re
working with a university right now with lots of lecturing,” she said. “When
the system detects that students haven’t participated in a while, we flash a
big red screen on the instructor’s laptop to notify them to incorporate some
student interaction.”
