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Lecturing to Your Students: Is Their Heart In It?

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Proceedings of the Future Technologies Conference (FTC) 2018 (FTC 2018)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 880))

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Abstract

The measurement of cognitive activity using physiological means such as heart rate activity is a well-established research practice. Most previous studies have concluded that elevated heart rate occurs when an individual is cognitively engaged. However, there have been very few studies focusing on the effect in a learning environment. The recent proliferation of accurate, cheap and unobtrusive wearable devices with biometric sensors presents a new opportunity to perform a relatively inexpensive, natural, large scale study on the biometric effects on students during a series of lectures. This study presents the design and results of a unique two year study of students’ heart rate activity during a series of university computer programming lectures. It benchmarks student heart rate patterns during lectures and finds that there is a significant correlation between elevated heart rates and module scores. To the best of the authors’ knowledge this type of live, natural learning environment study has not been reported before.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Queens’ University, Belfast, BT9 6AY, Northern Ireland

    Aidan McGowan, Philip Hanna, Des Greer & John Busch

Authors
  1. Aidan McGowan
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  2. Philip Hanna
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  3. Des Greer
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  4. John Busch
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aidan McGowan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Saga University , Saga, Japan

    Kohei Arai

  2. The Science and Information (SAI) Organization, Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK

    Rahul Bhatia

  3. The Science and Information (SAI) Organization, Bradford, UK

    Supriya Kapoor

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McGowan, A., Hanna, P., Greer, D., Busch, J. (2019). Lecturing to Your Students: Is Their Heart In It?. In: Arai, K., Bhatia, R., Kapoor, S. (eds) Proceedings of the Future Technologies Conference (FTC) 2018. FTC 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 880. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02686-8_75

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