2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

WIP - A Web-based Face Recognition Application for Better In-person Learning
It is widely agreed that students gain more confidence and build stronger relationships when their instructor addresses them by their names. However, it is often difficult for instructors to recognize and remember all the names of students in their lectures when the lecture size becomes relatively large. A traditional approach is to ask the students to bring a name tag. However, name tags can be tacky and difficult to manage. During the covid pandemic, educational institutions utilized web meeting technologies in place for in-person meetings. When the instructors want to interact with other participants, they can call out their names without knowing them priorly by just looking at their name tags. Using face recognition algorithms, we want to bring the convenience of web meeting technologies to in-person education environments. This abstract shall introduce the proposed solution as a Work-In-Progress (WIP).
Drawing inspiration from the name tag feature, we are motivated to design a digitalized solution that relieves the pressure on instructors from remembering names. The proposed solution is a web-based application that will capture faces from videos/pictures through a User Interface that operates on web browsers and passes the data to a face recognition AI mechanism. User management systems will also be implemented to protect user privacy. With the Real-time Face Recognition Application, the course instructors can quickly recognize their students and address them by their names. This creates a more engaged and confidence-inspiring learning environment for students.
We are conducting surveys and collecting feedback from instructors and students while testing our application in lectures. The students’ survey focus is on their comfortability-in-learning scale and degree of agreement on an enhanced and increased classroom learning experience. On the other hand, the focus of the instructor’s survey and feedback is on students’ engagement and their willingness to engage in asking and answering questions during lectures.