Biosensors Show Promise as a Measure of Student Engagement in a Large Introductory Biology Course

Abstract

Skin biosensors were used to measure student engagement in an introductory biology classroom. One section of the class was taught with active-learning approaches, the other with traditional lecture. Results from galvanic skin response devices indicated students in the active-learning classroom were more engaged than those in the traditional lecture.

Development and Evaluation of a Survey to Measure Student Engagement at the Activity Level in General Chemistry

“…Multiple methods have been used to gauge student engagement in the classroom. A recent study by McNeal et al found that biosensors could be used to assess engagement through measuring changes in the galvanic skin response, although the researchers noted that this technique may be difficult to generalize due to individuals’ physical differences. Observational methods have also been developed for measuring student engagement with respect to behavioral engagement, , and an observational protocol has been developed to assess students’ cognitive engagement through mapping overt student behaviors onto different levels of engagement .…”

A Tale of Two Institutions: Analyzing the Impact of Gamified Student Response Systems on Student Anxiety in Two Different Introductory Biology Courses

“…Analogous to much of educational research, this study is limited by its reliance on self-reporting. Future studies of classroom anxiety should continue to supplement self-reporting metrics with physiological data (e.g., biosensors; McNeal et al ., 2020 ). As there were no “control” courses that did not use Kahoot!, our study was not capable of assessing whether using Kahoot!…”

Brief Training and Intensive Mentoring Guide Postdoctoral Scholars to Student-Centered Instruction

“…Capturing Instructor and Student Behaviors. While many classroom observation protocols exist (e.g., Eddy et al, 2015;Hora, 2015;Durham et al, 2018), the COPUS (Smith et al, 2013) is becoming a standard instrument for quantifying the amount of time spent on active instruction in classrooms (e.g., Lund et al, 2015;Stains et al, 2018;Zagallo et al, 2019;McNeal et al, 2020;Denaro et al, 2021). Moreover, the large set of COPUS data by Stains et al (2018), as linked to in their supplementary materials, provides a control group that represents how most instructors teach STEM courses in the United States.…”