Supporting Networked Collaborative Learning !Using Eye-Tracking Technology to Augment Joint Visual Attention"

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Bertrand Schneider, Roy Pea

Stanford University, School of Education

METHODS Participants: 42 college-level students from a community college (average age 23.0, SD = 8.3; 28 females, 14 males) Experimental Conditions: “visible-gaze” condition with the gaze-awareness tool (N = 24); “no-gaze” condition (N = 20) without the gaze-awareness tool. Measures: •  Learning test (3 sub-dimensions: concepts, memory, transfer) •  Quality of collaboration (Meier, Spada and Rummel, 2007) •  Eye-tracking data (fixations, saccades, pupil size)

INTRODUCTION Joint attention is fundamental to any kind of social coordination: young infants communicate their emotions by being in a state of synchrony with their caregivers, which in turn helps them achieve visual coordination when learning to speak (Stern, 1977; Brooks & Meltzoff, 2008). Professors teach by highlighting subtle nuances between students’ and experts’ conceptual understanding of a domain (Roth, 2001). Groups of students rely on the coordination between its members to reach the solution of a problem (Barron, 2003).

PURPOSE The goal of our work is to develop new ways of supporting the establishment of joint attention. We use eye-tracking technologies to share users’ gaze in a collaborative learning situation. More specifically, our first attempt involves dyads studying contrasting cases (Schwartz & Bransford, 1998) in a remote collaboration. We introduce a new kind of awareness tool that provides participants with the position of their partner’s gaze on the screen, allowing for real-time mutual gaze perception. RESULTS

1.  Dyads learned more and had a higher quality of collaboration when using the gaze-awareness tool (F(1,40) = 7.81, p < 0.01). Interaction effect with the students’ status (leader/follower): F(1,38) = 5.29, p < 0.05

2.  The number of moments of joint attention is sig. correlated with the learning gain (r = 0.39, p < 0.05)

DISCUSSION Conclusions: •  Our study shows that the role of joint attention is preponderant in collaborative learning situations. •  This process can be enhanced by technological tools (i.e. eye-trackers)

Future Work: •  replicate those results in other settings (e.g. co-located dyad)

References Barron, B. (2003). When smart groups fail. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 12(3), 307-359.

Bransford, J., & Schwartz, D. (1999). Rethinking Transfer: A Simple Proposal with Multiple Implications. Review of Research in Education, 24.

Brooks, R., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2008). Infant gaze following and pointing predict accelerated vocabulary growth through two years of age: a longitudinal, growth curve modeling study. Journal of Child Language, 35(01), 207–220.

Meier, A., Spada, H., & Rummel, N. (2007). A rating scheme for assessing the quality of computer- supported collaboration processes. International Journal of Computer- Supported Collaborative Learning, 2, 63–86.

Roth, W. M. (2001). Gestures: Their role in teaching and learning. Review of Educational Research, 71, 365–392.

Stem, D. (1977). The first relationship. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Trilling, B., & Fadel, C. (2009). 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times. John Wiley & Sons.

Acknowledgment: Supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SMA-0835854) to the LIFE Science of Learning Center.

SLD-2: Joint Attention Theory Gate 2

Figure 2. Results of the learning test (categorizing each subject as leader or follower).

Figure 1. Dyads worked on these five contrasting cases. The right side shows possible answers. Using a jigsaw collaborative learning method, for any given dyad, the answer for case #1 was given to subject-1 and the answer for case #6 was given to subject-2. Participants had to solve three remaining cases (#2, top middle and #4, #5 bottom left and right of the screen).

EXPERIMENTAL TASK Dyads remotely worked on a set of contrasting cases to learn how the human brain processes visual information (12 min). They then read a textbook chapter on the same topic (12 min.

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Figure 3. Percentage of moments of joint attention (JA) across our two experimental conditions. Dyads in the “visible-gaze” condition had sig. more moments of JA (F(1,30) = 22.45, p < 0.001)

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Figure 4. mediation model for the learning gain. Only the number of moments of joint attention was a significant mediator (CI: [0.03; 0.19]).