by Niall Firth, New Scientist
We all remember dozing off during a boring class at school. A robotic teacher that monitors students’ attention levels and mimics the techniques human teachers use to hold their pupils’ attention promises to end the snoozing, especially for students who have their lessons online. Tests indicate the robot can boost how much students remember from their lessons. Intelligent tutoring systems that use virtual teachers to interact with students could play a crucial role in the expanding field of online education. The trouble with online courses is that it is usually impossible to know whether the student is concentrating and engaging with the lesson. Unlike virtual teachers, human teachers have a series of tricks for keeping their classes focused – changing the pitch or tone of their voice, for example, or gesturing to emphasise points and engage with their audience. Bilge Mutlu and Dan Szafir at the University of Wisconsin-Madison wanted to find out whether a robot could use some of the same techniques to improve how much a student retains.
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