By Pankaj Gupta
Post-COVID-19, online education has become the norm. But e-learning environments, being isolated and prone to distraction, face a challenge of keeping students engaged and motivated.
Numerous researches have suggested that the emotional state of students directly or indirectly influences their learning process. Therefore, for educational institutions, it is important to gauge the learners’ mood using some basic facial indicators, especially in an e-learning environment, and to finally get them in a receptive frame of mind (it can allow students to effectively understand, process and store the information that is being shared in a classroom).
Therefore, to encourage and facilitate smart learning in a virtual environment, FaceAI paired with live video has increasingly gained prominence, where the smart software intelligently assesses the frame of mind of learners from a variety of different formats. Are students happy, bored, stressed or angry? How do they feel or respond to new topics, new learning methods, course content, etc? Does it leave them confused, surprised or frustrated?
The advanced deep learning algorithms perceive the emotional state of learners and even identify change of emotions while the class is in progress. By sensing expressions and interpreting facial features of students, these reveal meaningful patterns about them, which can aid teachers in designing and implementing the right teaching strategy.
The use of FaceAI, along with the Live Video technology, has also been empowering schools, colleges and universities to securely conduct online exams. Right from confirming the identity of students during registration, to ensuring their integrity during the test and controlling the incidences of cheating, the technology has been creating breakthroughs. Along with this, attendance tracking in an online classroom is made easy and accurate with the use of FaceAI and Live Video, which also intelligently controls fake attendance.
With online learning the new normal, proactive deployment of such solutions can encourage smart learning. It can also lead to stronger teacher-student ties, which plays a key role in building a positive e-learning environment. Facial and emotion recognition can go a long way in bringing the best out of the current generation of e-learners.
(The author is CEO & founder, EnableX.io. Views expressed are personal.)