College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
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EQIPping Growers to Protect the Environment
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Emotional Response Tells All
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| Tiffany Drape, graduate student, uses computer software that focuses on 42 points on the face and can recognize specific properties in facial images, including emotional expressions such as happy, sad, angry, surprised, scared, disgusted, and neutral state. |
What can a student’s emotional response to a particular teaching style tell us about how successful they will be in class? Researchers in the Department of Agricultural and Extension Education hope to find out, using advanced behavior-monitoring technology.
A classroom in Litton-Reaves Hall was recently retrofitted with five high-definition video cameras that will be used to monitor individuals’ behavior in response to various teaching styles. The cameras are operated from an external control room and can be focused on individuals’ facial expressions and other physical actions. An automatic facial-expression analysis tool is then used to assist in analyzing facial signals. The software focuses on 42 points on the face and can recognize specific properties in facial images, including emotional expressions such as happy, sad, angry, surprised, scared, disgusted, and neutral state.
An initial study being conducted by Tiffany Drape and Cory Eppler, Ph.D. students in agriculture and extension education, will evaluate individuals’ responses to selected teaching variables that are reflected in the university’s teaching evaluation form. In one phase of the study, a group of students will be exposed to a presenter who is well organized. Another group of students will be exposed to a presenter who is very disorganized. The sessions will be videotaped and the students’ reactions will be recorded and compared with information gathered from pre- and post-test evaluations. In this case, the researchers hope to discover whether the degree of organization affects student engagement and student impressions of the instructor’s effectiveness.
“Research has shown that it only takes a couple of minutes for a student to determine whether they will like a class,” says Rick Rudd, professor and head of the Department of Agricultural and Extension Education. “We will be seeing if we can confirm this based on their emotional responses.”
They will also use the technology to help faculty members become better teachers. Rudd explains that faculty members often don’t realize that the comments made in the classroom can be offensive to some students. A student’s reaction may not reflect his or her true feelings. By studying the students’ spontaneous behavior, researchers can capture initial emotional response, which individuals cannot control.
According to Rudd, this type of technology is used heavily in other fields of research and surveillance, such as neuroscience, psychology, criminal justice, and usability testing, but Virginia Tech will be the first to use this technology for educational and teaching research.
In addition to the educational research that is planned for the laboratory, Rudd hopes to make the technology available for cross-disciplinary projects. “For example, this behavioral research could be added as a component to the sensory research that is currently being conducted in the Department of Food Science and Technology,” he says. “In addition to an individual giving us feedback during a taste test, we can also gather behavior data to confirm whether the person really meant what they said based on their physical reaction to the food item.”
Rudd points out that the ability to do this type of research will also help researchers translate their research to the public. “Determining how the human element connects with the research can help further define the research and help with adaptation,” says Rudd.