Lead Faculty: Adam V. Maltese

Collaborating Faculty: Joshua A. Danish

Students: Joseph A. Harsh

Funding: Internal funds

Background: While much existing and ongoing research attempts to determine the impacts of what students experience during their education, these studies often involve indirect measures of these experiences through data collected by self-report or by external observation. In related work, teachers often learn to evaluate their own teaching by viewing videotaped classroom sessions (e.g., Goldman, 2007; Sherin, Russ, Sherin & Colestock, 2008). What if those instructors could also watch their teaching from the perspective of their students? What if researchers could determine more precisely where students are attending during lectures or other learning activities, particularly those that are designed around the assumption that students are attending to specific aspects of the visual field? To address these questions, we propose to evaluate the use of point-of-view (POV) cameras to supplement or replace common data collection methods in educational settings – both in and out of the classroom. POV cameras will allow us to capture video of the area that students are attending to during learning experiences. These data can then be used to examine the shifts in students’ attention, and allow researchers and instructors to explore hypotheses regarding the actual visual cues that students are attending to and responding to in instructional settings.

Publications: Forthcoming