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How Facial Analysis Software Could Help Struggling Students
moon_unit2 writes "Tech Review has a story on research showing that facial recognition software can accurately spot signs that programming students are struggling. NC State researchers tracked students learning java and used an open source facial-expression recognition engine to identify emotions such as frustration or confusion. The technique could be especially useful for Massive Open Online Courses — where many thousands of students are working remotely — but it could also help teachers identify students who need help in an ordinary classroom, experts say. That is, as long as those students don't object to being watched constantly by a camera."
beers given as treatment? or is crack more in vogue?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
...to get everybody in the class to show up wearing one of these.
But, like most problems, if technology can solve it for you, why wouldn't you use it?
A teacher could help struggling students.
I remember when technology was fun. It's getting really sour and ominous, and I am starting to fear for future generations.
Unless it identified almost all of them it wasn't working ;-0
I would be more interested in the ones who don't show that emotion, since they are the ones so lost and confused that they have abandoned all hope and given up. If you are trying to learn Java, and you aren't frustrated and confused, you're doing it wrong.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
But, like most problems, if technology can solve it for you, why wouldn't you use it?
Well, that depends.
If the problem is that I need to learn concept X, but the technology provides the solution for me, then the problem isn't really solved, because I still don't know concept X.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Listen to this guy. He's the lead Fry Cook at his Burger King.
I did a lot of that in my time. Although I can see why one would automate some parts (like getting a sample to analyze the facial from), but I really don't see any fun in letting the software do everything.
It's only metadata, isn't it?
Sorry, I forgot there are ads on the Web; I use Lynx.
That is a compelling argument for subsidized post secondary education.
Seriously? What ever happend to the idea of a student being responsible for asking for help when they need it?
Yeah, I don't understand why this is needed - if the student needs help, he can ask for help. If he chooses to go it alone without seeking help even when he is frustrated and doesn't know what he's doing, that doesn't bode well for his success in the "real world", so he probably deserves to fail out of the class.
I certainly don't want my computer's camera watching me in case it detects that I need help. If I want help I can ask for it and I don't want the professor interrupting me with "help" when the system detects the stress in my face when the cause of the stress is because my dog died... or I'm tired... or I really need to go to the bathroom.
You have Teacher and Professor ego to deal with. Will the students care, probably less so than the teachers, whose goal is to make them look like a better person than the rest of society. If you were to show that kids are struggling in their class and it isn't due to their own laziness, will make them look like a less of the perfect person. Off to complain to the union about this. Screw if kids are missing out in a good education it is always about the teachers, If they are teachers they must be trying work for the students best interests.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Nice try NSA...
That is, as long as those students don't object to being watched constantly by a camera.
I don't meant to sound like a card-carrying member of the Fringe Lunatic Association, but after the multiple recent revelations that the LEO's ride around photographing cars and license plates, USPS photographs all mail, the NSA collects metadata on all phone calls, the FBI and NSA together mine data from social networks—in short, that the US government in fact does all those things that the fringe lunatics warned about for years—it's hard to trust a university, whether state-run or private, with a camera to watch me at my computer in much the same way that it's impossible to trust Microsoft to watch me with an always-on X-Box One camera/mic setup.* I feel that recent events have given students very good reason to question whether the benefits of automatic frustration-recognition software are worth the risk that some sort of data might make its way from the camera to an FBI/NSA/Fusion database, despite the sturdiest ringfences and firewalls of promises, hope, and trust. Really, if the MOOC designers are really concerned about frustration, why not just include an "I'm frustrated! Give me a hint!" button on the user interface? Why monitor faces through a camera, and why propose the idea at the same time that MS's creepy XBox camera idea went down in flames?
One of my friends did his masters thesis project in code quality metrics. As part of it he wrote some code that will find the average LOC per function, code/comment ratio etc etc and spit out a letter grade. His thesis guru was a fiend. He fed the source code of this analysis code into itself. Poor guy graded himself a C-minus or something.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Assignment 12-A is designed to require an average student approximately 20 minutes to solve.
Student #001A solves the problem in 3.5 minutes - Too easy for his skill level
Student #312Q solves the problem in 42.3 minutes - he is struggling and needs further assistance
Problem solved, and you didn't have to spend a dime placing spy-cams at every workstation. You're welcome.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Why? Any good teacher will always seek to proactively help a struggling student. The education system must be pretty shit these days if attitudes like yours is the norm.
Learning when and how to ask for help is part of getting along in society.
Government employee, it is, then.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Java is a horribly convoluted mess and completely unsuitable for learning programming of any kind. Hence every student struggles and that makes detecting it quite trivial.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Because some teachers want to have additional tools to proactively help struggling students that maybe tok shy or embarrased to ask for help. How terrible of an idea that is. Clearly the point of being a teacher is not helping their students, right?
When you graduate and get a job, your boss isn't going to be using those same tools to check in on you to see when you're struggling and need help. Asking for help when you need it is part of the educational process. Giving students a crutch because they are "too shy" to ask for help doesn't really help them in the long run. If they are too shy to ask their instructor for help (the person they are paying to teach them), then how will they ever be able to say to their boss "Hey, I don't think I know how to get starting on this project, can you point me in the right direction".
Besides, teachers already have tools to see when you're struggling and don't know the material - those tools are tests and homework.
I meant completely.
Actually it is the availability of credit that does that, not the subsidy. As a good example look at the cost of in state tuition, where the tax payer foots part of the bill vs out of state at the public university.
Rather than dealing with the privacy issues and with the inevitable plethora of false positives, wouldn't it make more sense to have a button called "Raise Hand" or "Express Confusion" or "I'm lost"? In fact, very much like the buttons that already exist on distance learning interfaces?
Is this supposed to handle the case where users are confused but can't make themselves ask for help? Or is this setting up a framework to later require that all distance learning students have a camera trained on them? I was going to preface that with "tinfoil hat time" but constant surveillance seems to be less and less the stuff of conspiracy theories and more and more the stuff of daily life.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
As opposed to VIRGOs, I assume.
Ezekiel 23:20
The Slashdot post says "open source facial-expression recognition engine", but the article links to a commercial web site that makes no indication that their product is open-source.
The problem with this type of innovation is that it's a shot in the dark.
We haven't the first clue for the most effective way to teach people. We study things in HS because the subjects are "classics", not because they are useful (Geometry versus Probability, for instance). The "walk around lecturing in front of passive students" model doesn't fit with the need to be rambunctious. The fixed, level-based scale of achievement: "all children should be at this level of achievement at this age, else they are disabled" doesn't take into account variations in maturity or birth date. (Be born a day earlier, get put into a class where you're competing with class mates a year older.)
For reference, check out redirect. The author carefully details a large number of education techniques and social services which have no scientific basis whatsoever. Predictably, when actually studied, many of these ideas do more damage than good; for instance, regarding teen pregnancy, government teaching initiatives tend to increase the teen pregnancy rate.
There's simply no evidence that a) this system works to the degree of accuracy needed, b) doesn't have a high false-positive rate due to unforseen factors such as drapes waving in the background, c) can be used to any good effect (double-blind studies anyone?) as a teaching aid.
Our track record for using technology to help education is not good.
It makes for a good story, though. "We don't know the best way to teach, but here's something that should work!"
Here's another thought problem for you. Recall the 2009 Star Trek movie which shows a young Spock standing in a pit while a computer presents audio and video lessons. (I don't think the pit model works, but a student in front of a screen seems natural enough.)
Assume that you have control over this content, and can do double-blind studies of minor changes. Each video is a computer program, so any small piece can be redone without retaping the entire lesson. The program allows student interaction.
What features would your ideal teaching machine have, what sorts of things would you teach, what sorts of experiments could you do to home in on the optimum teaching method?
While there certainly are some humanities students who get support - most of them do not receive full support from their institution. Typically, half time TA with no tuition coverage. This can also be the case for engineering PhDs at some institutions. Almost all science PhD students are typically guaranteed 2 years TA plus tuition even at the very smallest schools. In addition, non-STEM related PhDs take longer (about 1.5 years longer at the median). This leads to more student loan debt for non-STEM PhDs compared to STEM PhDs. Please see this study for a very nice comparison: The Price of a Science PhD
In addition, you make what I believe to be two assumptions by implication about Universities:
1. That professors are hired to teach.
2. That TAs will do a worse job teaching than professors.
Professors are NOT hired to teach - the exception is small private colleges without graduate programs. Professors are hired to bring research money into the University. The University takes in the region of 40-60% off the top of grants "for institutional research support." While this is not always the case (for some grants, the granting institution require the university to commit matching funds) it is more than the norm. Secondly, while professors are typically more knowledgeable in the subject and typically have more experience teaching (by virtue of spending the time as a TA during graduate school), that does not mean they are the better teachers. The best teachers I ever had were evenly split between professors and TAs. While not scientific, my colleagues experiences were similar.
LEOs could and would abuse it.
"The murder suspect is currently sitting in their Java 152 lab, trying to figure out the difference between a Jbutton and a Jtogglebutton... Their mood is 'mad enough to kill someone' so we are pretty sure they did it. Lets go pick them up!"
Using phone apps that do much more make more sense than trying to scan a room full of faces trying to detect the difference between constipation and consternation.. Students can run an iPhone/Android app that let students answer questions from their instructors... the quiz results can be used to get immediate feedback on the learning process..
I think this one is better:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/14
If everything comes down to a cost benefit analysis, we lose everything that isn't profitable. Have you ever worked for a company that valued its "profit centers" at the expense of the rest of the workforce? It is a narrow and short-sighted viewpoint, divorced from reality. Not everything needs to be approached as a business.
Couple things:
1. They may not know. I know it sounds weird, but students don't always know when they don't know what's going on.
2. I have known a fair number of people whose parents or teachers taught them not to "make waves" -- say, asking for help. They just freeze up and quietly fail. Yeah, they can get better from that, but getting better requires, in part, getting at least some help they need but can't ask for.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
To quote Sugata Mitra, any teacher that can be replaced by a computer should be.
In a real class, spotting the struggling student is obvious. Teachers already do what the proposed system acheive
It is interesting for a MOOC. But if MOOC teachers have to handle struggling students, I fear it will destroy MOOC viability
Maybe by actively demonstrating that there is nothing to be shy about, and that needing help does not get you ridiculed and/or ignored?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
This actually does help students get ready for the real world;
Your employer is going to spy on you. Get used to it.
If you're frustrated in your efforts to cut the "liberty manacles" off your foot, facial recognition will pick that up and an assistant will come by to help you put a new, more form-fitting manacle on your leg.
Students and workers who are too shy to ask for a higher quality leg manacle don't need to overcome shyness. In fact, this shyness is seen as a quality in many workers.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
CERT looks really cool, but it doesn't appear to be open source; at least there doesn't seem to be a download link anywhere. It looks as if there's a company called "Emotient" that's commercializing the tech. It might have been open source at some point but it looks proprietary now.