A school is using facial recognition technology to work out if pupils are paying attention or sleeping at the back
Webcams will track the eye movements and facial expressions of students in order to determine whether they’re paying attention in class
A SCHOOL is using artificial intelligence and facial analysis to determine whether students are paying attention in class.
The software uses students’ webcams to analyse eye movements and facial expressions to determine whether they are paying attention during an online lecture.
The software, called Nestor, will be used in two online classes for business school students in Paris, starting this summer.
It's hoped it will allow professors to figure out which parts of their lecture were too boring, so they can grab students' attention next time around.
Students can also learn when they're more likely to doze off and introduce tricks to keep their mind ticking over - like chewing some stimulating minty gum after a certain amount of time.
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Nestor will create quizzes on material which came up in lectures when the student had the lowest level of concentration, so they haven't missed anything when it comes to exams.
Founder Marcel Saucet said that his technology could revolutionise increasingly popular massive open online courses, or MOOCs for short.
“The problem with MOOCs is that they don’t work,” Saucet told The Verge.
"It’s been 10 years that we’ve been trying e-learning, and in the US it’s been 25 years. And it doesn’t work."
He said Nestor won't store any of the footage, and how the data is kept and used after is up to ECG Business School, in France.
The data would also be encrypted and anonymized, he says.
Previous attempts at bringing out artificially intelligence-fuelled classes have come a cropper over privacy fears.
New York firm InBloom shut down in 2014 after its data analytics were deemed too creepy.
It wanted to store test results along with personal information on pupils to "personalise" their learning.
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