EEG in the classroom: Synchronised neural recordings during video presentation
This work addresses the challenge of real-time engagement inference in educational settings, though it is incremental as it extends existing methods to naturalistic environments.
The study tackled the problem of measuring student engagement in a classroom by using synchronized EEG recordings during video presentations, and found that inter-subject correlation (ISC) of neural activity could be tracked with portable low-cost equipment, reproducing results from lab studies.
We performed simultaneous recordings of electroencephalography (EEG) from multiple students in a classroom, and measured the inter-subject correlation (ISC) of activity evoked by a common video stimulus. The neural reliability, as quantified by ISC, has been linked to engagement and attentional modulation in earlier studies that used high-grade equipment in laboratory settings. Here we reproduce many of the results from these studies using portable low-cost equipment, focusing on the robustness of using ISC for subjects experiencing naturalistic stimuli. The present data shows that stimulus-evoked neural responses, known to be modulated by attention, can be tracked in for groups of students with synchronized EEG acquisition. This is a step towards real-time inference of engagement in the classroom.