Abstract:

Most promising methods to deliver effective education at distance are rapidly emerging and evolving as e-learning systems. To support diverse teaching and learning paradigms, e-learning content has to be more than static online text and lackluster material. It is imperative to create a dynamic interaction between e-learning content and users. Technological advances offer new paradigms in distance education and strengthened the distance learning approach on e-learning systems’ usability and overall user experience. Distance learning is a cognitive and repetitive task, requiring learners’ attention as well as their interest. It is imperative to create a dynamic interaction between e-learning content and users. Therefore, content as well as delivery have to be supported in a highly personalised manner by e-learning systems.

In this paper the authors present a system which compiles feedback related to the behavioral state of the user (e.g. level of interaction and attention) in the context of reading an electronic document; this is achieved using an eye-blink measures to identify alertness and responsiveness to the e-learning material. The real time vision-based system used a novel evaluation approach to identify level of alertness by performance correlated against user physiological properties (e.g. eye-blink parameters).

Finally, authors present an innovative interaction and alertness measure experiment to exemplify learner’s responsiveness to the online material presented. Therefore, when delivering content, in addition to the pragmatic functionality of an e-learning system the visual interactivity experience is emphasized as a significant feature for effective content development and delivery. This trend includes but are not limited to e-learning it can be used for micro learning, personalized learning and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) content development.

Keywords:

e-learning, Education, Distance Learning, Eye Blink, Vision-based system, MOOC, Micro learning, Personalized learning.