Teaching Eye Tracking: Challenges and Perspectives

Abstract

Eye tracking studies are more complicated to design, conduct, and to evaluate than traditional studies solely based on performance measures like error rates and response times. This is typically due to the more complex hardware setup, the calibration procedures, and the spatio-temporal nature of the recorded data that must be analyzed, visualized, or statistically evaluated. As a benefit, eye movement data contains patterns of visual attention over space and time that are not observable in standard error rates, completion times, and qualitative feedback. Students in the field of visualization, human-computer interaction, and user experience represent an interest group that would benefit from the application of eye tracking during their studies and in their future careers. Consequently, instructing them how to design, setup, conduct, and evaluate an eye tracking study is of special interest to current researchers involved in teaching. We describe education in eye tracking in five courses with 79 students from bachelor, master, and PhD levels. We outline our concept and discuss the challenges to raise people with no experience in eye tracking to a level of knowledge that allows them to apply this emerging technology to different scenarios including visual stimuli and related research questions. We discuss our teaching strategy in two course setups (summer school and traditional university lecture), the results of the students’ eye tracking studies, and which challenges they and the teachers faced during the course.