Back in February I saw this tweet on the Twitter

Professor with an #AR headset using facial and emotion recognition with gauge the degree of student engagement in a lecture – what to make of an idea like that?! #ISE2019 #AVTweeps pic.twitter.com/g3F8MCwgdo

— Dom Pates | @dompates@mastodon.online (@dompates) February 5, 2019

I started writing a blog post about this and then never finished it, so then I found the draft and decided to reflect on this technological development.

Imagine if such a technology existed and was in use. A lecturer using an Augmented Reality headset, which uses facial and emotional recognition gauges student engagement.

Now there is a huge question mark over whether we could even develop such a technology and create the unbiased algorithms  that would be required to both define student engagement and how using facial and emotional recognition would actually be able to measure that engagement.

Just because someone said they were engaged in a session doesn’t mean always they were.

One of the other key questions for me that needs to be answered is, what does a lecturer do if using such a system, found their audience disengaged. Do they continue despite knowing this, stop and send people home, or do they launch into a song and dance routine or even a puppet show?

What do lecturers do now when they believe that their students are disengaged?