Assessing learning styles through eye tracking for e-learning applications

Abstract

Adapting the presentation of learning material to the specific student?s characteristics is useful to improve the overall learning experience and learning styles can play an important role to this purpose. In this paper, we investigate the possibility to distinguish between Visual and Verbal learning styles from gaze data. In an experiment involving first year students of an engineering faculty, content regarding the basics of programming was presented in both text and graphic form, and participants? gaze data was recorded by means of an eye tracker. Three metrics were selected to characterize the user?s gaze behavior, namely, percentage of fixation duration, percentage of fixations, and average fixation duration. Percentages were calculated on ten intervals into which each participant?s interaction time was subdivided, and this allowed us to perform timebased assessments. The obtained results showed a significant relation between gaze data and Visual/Verbal learning styles for an information arrangement where the same concept is presented in graphical format on the left and in text format on the right. We think that this study can provide a useful contribution to learning styles research carried out exploiting eye tracking technology, as it is characterized by unique traits that cannot be found in similar investigations.

Examining The Influence of Interruptions in Online Learning on Student's Perceptions And Comprehension

“…In a study carried out by Nugrahaningsih et al (2021) for evaluating different learning styles in online learning using an eye tracking device, participants watched a presentation that contained 10 different slides. In order to analyze the different learning styles, the researchers divided the timeline of the presentation into ten distinct strips of time of interest (TOI) and for each defined TOI a certain behavior was studied.…”

Using Synchronized Eye Movements to Predict Attention in Online Video Learning

“…Research has consistently demonstrated that learners with distinct learning styles (or cognitive styles) exhibit divergent viewing patterns when engaging with learning materials as summarized in Nugrahaningsih et al [22]. For example, Al-Wabil et al [23] observed that visual learners classified by Felder and Silverman's learning style focused more at the multimedia areas, while verbal learners focused more at the text areas.…”