UNICA includes innovative Erasmus+ project that will study eye-movements in the classroom

UNICA is part of a new Erasmus+ project! Teaching in Higher Education Effectively via Eye-tracking is one of the granted projects within the scope of 2019 ERASMUS+ Main Action 2 "Strategic Partnerships in Higher Education (KA203)". The project will be coordinated by Turkish University METU – Middle East Technical University and, besides UNICA, includes as partners the University of Salerno (Italy), Vilnius University (Lithuania), Atatürk University Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching (ÖGEM) and Dama Sistem Ltd. from METU Technopolis (both from Turkey). The project has a budget of 282.628 euros and will last 33 months.

The objective of the project is to improve teaching and classroom management skills by studying eye movements and translating them into data that contributes to more efficient lecturing. In order to achieve this, eye movements of lecturers and students during class will be recorded with special glasses. The analysis of eye data will then give direct information about the cognitive process of lecturers, allowing them to improve their teaching skills.

At the end of the project, computer-aided learning content will be designed and developed to facilitate the rapid transfer of knowledge and skills that academicians should acquire.

Collecting data through eye-tracking is relatively new in educational research studies, which makes the project stand out as innovative since it will allow overcoming the limitations of educational research studies that generally use self-reported data.