Lecturing to your students: Is their heart in it?

Abstract

The measurement of cognitive activity using physiological means such as heart rate activity is a well-established research practice. Most previous studies have concluded that elevated heart rate occurs when an individual is cognitively engaged. However, there have been very few studies focusing on the effect in a learning environment. The recent proliferation of accurate, cheap and unobtrusive wearable devices with biometric sensors presents a new opportunity to perform a relatively inexpensive, natural, large scale study on the biometric effects on students during a series of lectures. This study presents the design and results of a unique two year study of students’ heart rate activity during a series of university computer programming lectures. It benchmarks student heart rate patterns during lectures and finds that there is a significant correlation between elevated heart rates and module scores. To the best of the authors’ knowledge this type of live, natural learning environment study has not been reported before.