26th March 2012 9:00
By Blue Tutors
We may be about to enter a new era of online tuition as software has been developed which uses students’ body language and facial expressions to assess their emotional state and change the tutoring method accordingly. This is according to a report on the French Tribune, which says that the software, developed at the universities of Notre Dame, Memphis and MIT, responds to students’ emotional and cognitive states.
The new software has been termed ‘Autotutor’. Initially Autotutor assessed a student’s knowledge by posing questions and analysing the answers. It then identifies and correlates misconceptions. It is even capable of answering questions and comments. However, it has now been updated to include the feature relating to body language and facial expression, and can alter the tutoring strategy to avoid any negative emotions.
The new software has been tested on 1000 students, and it’s said that the improvements have been approximately one letter grade, but whether this is an average, and over what time period is not made clear. The claim is that the new tutoring system is much better than traditional tuition, and that the more ‘human’ way in which the software works opens up many exciting new possibilities.