Classification of Students’ Conceptual Understanding in STEM Education using Their Visual Attention Distributions: A Comparison of Three Machine-Learning Approaches

Stefan Küchemann, Pascal Klein, Sebastian Becker, Niharika Kumari, Jochen Kuhn

2020

Abstract

Line-Graphs play a central role in STEM education, for instance, for the instruction of mathematical concepts or for analyzing measurement data. Consequently, they have been studied intensively in the past years. However, despite this wide and frequent use, little is known about students’ visual strategy when solving line-graph problems. In this work, we study two example line-graph problems addressing the slope and the area concept, and apply three supervised machine-learning approaches to classify the students performance using visual attention distributions measured via remote eye tracking. The results show the dominance of a large-margin classifier at small training data sets above random decision forests and a feed-forward artificial neural network. However, we observe a sensitivity of the large-margin classifier towards the discriminatory power of used features which provides a guide for a selection of machine learning algorithms for the optimization of adaptive learning environments.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Küchemann S., Klein P., Becker S., Kumari N. and Kuhn J. (2020). Classification of Students’ Conceptual Understanding in STEM Education using Their Visual Attention Distributions: A Comparison of Three Machine-Learning Approaches.In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-758-417-6, pages 36-46. DOI: 10.5220/0009359400360046

in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu20,
author={Stefan Küchemann and Pascal Klein and Sebastian Becker and Niharika Kumari and Jochen Kuhn},
title={Classification of Students’ Conceptual Understanding in STEM Education using Their Visual Attention Distributions: A Comparison of Three Machine-Learning Approaches},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,},
year={2020},
pages={36-46},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0009359400360046},
isbn={978-989-758-417-6},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,
TI - Classification of Students’ Conceptual Understanding in STEM Education using Their Visual Attention Distributions: A Comparison of Three Machine-Learning Approaches
SN - 978-989-758-417-6
AU - Küchemann S.
AU - Klein P.
AU - Becker S.
AU - Kumari N.
AU - Kuhn J.
PY - 2020
SP - 36
EP - 46
DO - 10.5220/0009359400360046