Facial Analysis Software Spots Struggling Students
One, in college only a small percentage of my learning took place in the classroom. Which is fortunate since my attendance was usually pretty spotty as an undergraduate. Digesting and analyzing lots of material took place away from the class which really only pointed students in the general direction.
That said, I find this software solution pretty damning of our higher education system.
Once, we had a pretty good system to spot struggling students. We called them "grades." Teachers would present students with questions that would demonstrate mastery of a course.
Flunk a test or bomb your homework assignments? You're struggling--and failing. Get "C"s? Struggling for sure. Getting higher grades than that? You aren't struggling. It may or may not be hard, but you are succeeding in learning what they are teaching.
The grades indicated how you were doing.
Is grade inflation so rampant these days that grades in course work no longer suffice to indicate whether you are struggling? And if so, is the real solution to this problem a software gadget?
Won't the wealthy students simply start taking facial control classes to spoof the software so their faces don't betray what their grades don't reflect? Or take injections like Botox or tailored drugs that dull the facial reactions that indicate "struggling" or stimulate reactions that indicate mastery and engagement? Heck, will you be able to buy facial masks that just emit "I own this material" signals?
And if the students are getting "A"s despite being shown to be struggling based on facial expressions, what do the teachers do? Flunk or reduce the grade of the student anyway? I'd love to listen to the office visit where the teaching assistant tells the student that notwithstanding their "A" work, the TA thinks the student needs to buckle down and study harder to master the subject.
People are screwing up the testing process and technology won't rescue us from that teaching failure.
