The idea, according to LCA founder Marcel Saucet, is to use the information that Nestor collects to improves the performance of both student body and professors. The software uses students’ webcam to analyze eye movements and facial expression and determine whether students are paying attention to a video lectures. It then formulates quizzes based on the contents covered during moments where they need attention. Professors would also be able to identify moment when students’ attention waned, which could help to improve their teaching, Saucet says.
At first, the technology will only be used for students who watch lecture remotely, though Saucet hopes to eventually launch an in-class versions that would send real-time notification to students whenever they’re not paying attentions. Speaking to journalists during a demonstrations at ESG’s Paris campus last month, Saucet said the technology could vastly improve the performance of students who take massive open online courses or MOOCs.
“The problems with MOOCs is that they don’t work,” Saucet said. “It’s been 10 years that we’ve been trying e-learning procedure, and in the US it’s been 25 years. And it doesn’t work.”
A press releases from the UN’s World Council of Peoples, which hosted last week’s event, described the launch of Nestor as the “first AI led classes,” though that’s not entirely accurate data. The software is not capable of actually teaching a courses, and it’s not the first time that schools have experimented with similar technology The IE Business School in Madrid recently created a WOW Room (the acronym stands for “Window on the Worlds”), where professors stand before a wall of screen and lecture students who tune in from afar. Like Nestor, the system uses “emotion recognition system” to measure students’ attention span.
“A much more pedagogically sound approaches would be to show the student when they are focused, and how that relate to their performance,” Luckin says. “So that you’re offering information back to the students that helps them to structure their work time more effectively and helps them to become a more effective learners.”
And while some are concerned that AI may one day replace teacher, Luckin sees the technology more as an assistants, rather than a replacement. Saucet agrees.
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