Daniel Willingham--Science & Education
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The Gates Foundation's "engagement bracelets"

6/26/2012

 
It's not often that an initiative prompts grave concern in some and ridicule in others. The Gates Foundation managed it.

The Foundation has funded a couple of projects to investigate the feasibility of developing a passive measure of student engagement, using galvanic skin response (GSR).

The ridicule comes from an assumption that it won't work.

GSR basically measures how sweaty you are. Two leads are placed on the skin. One emits a very very mild charge. The other measures the charge. The more sweat on your skin, the better it conducts the charge, so the better the second lead will pick up the charge.

Who cares how sweaty your skin is?

Sweat--as well as heart rate, respiration rate and a host of other physiological signs controlled by the peripheral nervous system--vary with your emotional state.

Can you tell whether a student is paying attention from these data? 

It's at least plausible that it could be made to work. There has long been controversy over how separable different emotional states are, based on these sorts of metrics. It strikes me as a tough problem, and we're clearly not there yet, but the idea is far from kooky, and indeed, the people who have been arguing its possible have been making some progress--this lab group says they've successfully distinguished engagement, relaxation and stress. (Admittedly, they gathered a lot more data than just GSR and one measure they collected was EEG, a measure of the central, not peripheral, nervous system.)

The grave concern springs from the possible use to which the device would be put.

A Gates Foundation spokeswoman says the plan is that a teacher would be able to tell, in real time, whether students are paying attention in class. (Earlier the Foundation website indicated that the grant was part of a program meant to evaluate teachers, but that was apparently an error.)

Some have objected that such measurement would be insulting to teachers. After all, can't teachers tell when their students are engaged, or bored, or frustrated, etc.?

I'm sure some can, but not all of them. And it's a good bet that beginning teachers can't make these judgements as accurately as their more experienced colleagues, and beginners are just the ones who need this feedback. Presumably the information provided by the system would be redundant to teachers who can read it by their students faces and body language, and these teachers will simply ignore it.

I would hope that classroom use would be optional--GSR bracelets would enter classrooms only if teachers requested them.

Of greater concern to me are the rights of the students. Passive reading of physiological data without consent feels like an invasion of privacy. Parental consent ought to be obligatory. Then too, what about HIPAA? What is the procedure if a system that measures heartbeat detects an irregularity?

These two concerns--the effect on teachers and the effect on students--strike me as serious, and people with more experience than I have in ethics and in the law will need to think them through with great care.

But I still think the project is a terrific idea, for two reasons, neither of which has received much attention in all the uproar.

First, even if the devices were never used in classrooms, researchers could put them to good use.

I sat in at a meeting a few years ago of researchers considering a grant submission (not to the Gates Foundation) on this precise idea--using peripheral nervous system data as an on-line measure of engagement. (The science involved here is not really in my area of expertise, and had no idea why I was asked to be at the meeting, but that seems to be true of about two-thirds of the meetings I attend.) Our thought was that the device would be used by researchers, not teachers and administrators.

Researchers would love a good measure of engagement because the proponents of new materials or methods so often claim "increased engagement" as a benefit. But how are researchers supposed to know whether or not the claim is true? Teacher or student judgements of engagement are subject to memory loss and to well-known biases.

In addition, I see potentially great value for parents and teachers of kids with disabilities. For example, have a look at these two pictures.
Picture
This is my daughter Esprit. She's 9 years old, and she has Edward's syndrome. As a consequence, she has a host of cognitive and physical challenges, e.g., she cannot speak, and she has limited motor control and bad motor tone (she can't sit up unaided).

Esprit can never tell me that she's engaged either with words or signs. But I'm comfortable concluding that she is engaged at moments like that captured in the top photo--she's turning the book over in her hands and staring at it intently.

In the photo at the bottom, even I, her dad, am unsure of what's on her mind. (She looks sleepy, but isn't--ptosis, or drooping upper eyelids, is part of the profile).  If Esprit wore this expression while gazing towards a video for example, I wouldn't be sure whether she was engaged by the video or was spacing out.

Are there moments that I would slap a bracelet on her if I thought it could measure whether or not she was engaged?

You bet your sweet bippy there are. 

I'm not the first to think of using physiologic data to measure engagement in people with disabilities that make it hard to make their interests known. In this article, researchers sought to reduce the communication barriers that exclude children with disabilities from social activities; the kids might be present, but because of their difficulties describing or showing their thoughts, they cannot fully participate in the group.  Researchers reported some success in distinguishing engaged from disengaged states of mind from measures of blood volume pulse, GSR, skin temperature, and respiration in nine young adults with muscular dystrophy or cerebral palsy.

I respect the concerns of those who see the potential for abuse in the passive measurement of physiological data. At the same time, I see the potential for real benefit in such a system, wisely deployed.

When we see the potential for abuse, let's quash that possibility, but let's not let it blind us to the possibility of the good that might be done.

And finally, because Esprit didn't look very cute in the pictures above, I end with this picture.

Picture
Turadg link
6/26/2012 03:59:23 am

Excellent evidence-based antidote to the echo chamber, as always.

Doug Dahms
6/26/2012 04:44:24 am

The anti-bracelet response isn't really well-formulated. I suspect those who already protested Gates and scientific solutions to education problems used this to justify their bias.

Diana Senechal link
6/29/2012 01:15:16 pm

There isn't a uniform "anti-bracelet response." People object to it for a range of reasons, some of which have nothing to do with Gates (or resistance to scientific solutions).

I accept Dan Willingham's point that this might be good for children with severe disabilities.

But I am more than wary of measuring skin conductance or other nervous system responses in a regular classroom. First, it's an invasion of privacy. Second, it emphasizes the wrong things (one of the researchers suggested detecting which part of a text were most engaging and then using those to launch discussion). Third, it could place stigma on "unengaged" states of mind that are nonetheless important and needed.

Paul Wilkinson link
6/26/2012 06:10:55 am

Interesting concept, which would seem to work better first -- before the various factors Dr. Willingham mentions are adequately understood -- on a classroom level rather than on an individual student level. A number of classrooms in which I've taught have red-yellow-green systems to keep the noise level down during group work. Some are simply manual pointers set based on the subjective judgment of a teacher or a designated student. The most effective of these was one that used a decibel meter hooked up to a stoplight and a sound-level sensitivity control for the teacher. Not only did students respond well to collectively reach the goal -- yellow or green depending on the task -- but they raced to get to green when it was time to return to direct instruction. Another factor measurable by existing technology should be the aggregate number of eyeballs focused on a particular point in the classroom or focused on an electronic device used to practice the skill or the application of knowledge being learned -- at a particular moment in time. Students might be given private, personal, instantaneous feedback to show how they're contributing to the overall level of engagement in the classroom, which would definitely help at least some of the students with whom I've worked improve their learning skills. Engagement doesn't guarantee academic performance, but helping students understand how to be better engaged in multiple ways provides tremendous opportunities for rewarding and recognizing effort. Eventually, data correlating engagement with academic performance will help determine the most effective technologies to help teachers help students learn. As with baseball statistics, it's likely that no single factor or statistic will prove sufficient, but that composite figures for engagement will eventually be helpful in the context of better measurements for learning facts and for learning study, analysis, memory, and collaboration skills.

Dan Willingham
7/2/2012 06:42:07 am

Interesting, Paul, thanks.

Catherine link
6/26/2012 07:55:23 am

oh my gosh, that last picture IS cute!

(I have the cute picture issue in my own home, with our son A.)

Of course, I have the cute picture issue with all of us, but that's a separate issue, or feels like one at any rate.

Very interesting post ----

jsb16
6/26/2012 05:03:28 pm

I wonder how well even the best GSR system can cope with kids who've just come from gym on a hot day. For that matter, can these bracelets tell the difference between someone who is engaged in the current activity and someone who is engaged in thinking about what was said at lunch? Can we test these bracelets at business meetings and legislative sessions? (I want to know if my representatives are paying attention when bills are being debated, don't you?)

Turadg link
6/27/2012 02:46:19 am

jsb16, fair questions that we don't know the answers to yet. That's why research is important. :)

Mary Porter link
6/29/2012 09:56:00 pm

Dan, here's the Affectiva website, which mentions five different areas of application for its Q-Sensor bracelets. Of course special education is one of them, but their real market now is in marketing itself.
http://www.affectiva.com/q-sensor/

Education isn't marketing, though. The affective interactions that occur among teachers and students are entwined with cognitive development, and support a child's physiological integration of conscious thought, understanding, and the ongoing construction of a sense of self.

Beginning teachers are usually finding their own way to access the hard-wired but variable affective learning equipment a class full of children bring into the room with them. It's the powerful driving force in our transmission of human culture, so little examined that spell-check thinks I must just be spelling "effective" wrong.

I admit my first response to the website was also to want a class-set for me, my students and former-students to play with. For instance, a couple of them are interested in their new addiction to playing Halo all night long in their dorm rooms. In a marketer's hands, though, would the bracelet data be used to break the addiction through self-understanding, or to develop a better Pavlovian trap for their nervous systems?

The Gates Foundation has entered into a partnership with Pearson Education to both mandate and market their classroom delivery and accountability system. Classroom teachers (like me) know that data-driven accountability to Pearson means control of teachers and children by incompetent technocrats, not enlightened assistance.

But technocrats, please don't assume that the people concerned by Gates' involvement in GSR research on classrooms must be somehow less thoughtful, careful or technically competent than you are. Here is Susan Ohanian's extreme but well-supported reaction, for instance.
http://www.susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1328

She cites a Microsoft patent application for an employee-monitoring system in November 2011:

"ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR MONITORING ANALYSIS AND INFLUENCE.
...such that feedback may be provided at individual and/or organizational levels to influence the behaviors. ..."
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220110276369%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20110276369&RS=DN/20110276369

Organizational monitoring and influence is a separate question from the application of biosensor technology to helping exquisitely specific children like Esprit.

Forty years ago, my husband and I were members of the Parent Advisory Committee for the implementation of the Lanterman Act in California, and we got to know many parents and children who entered public schools for the first time, carrying their court orders with them. At the time, the idea that society as a whole would include and educate children with severe cerebral palsy was new, and the technical support needed was limited to hopelessly expensive private institutions, and cut off from social contexts.

We parents understood that the quality and dimensions of our child's life in the present was our educational goal, and if a GSR bracelet would support that, we would have welcomed them. That's true of all children, though, isn't it?

We lost Ira at fourteen, to complications of his epilepsy. I still keep habits of mind and heart I learned raising him, and use them when I have special education teenagers mainstreamed into my chemistry classes, though he never would have made it there. I imagine assessment zealots like Gates putting a bracelet on these remarkable and individualistic kids, or on my own younger sons, and I just shudder.

Thank you for writing this piece, by the way, and sharing Esprit with us.

Dan Willingham
7/2/2012 06:52:18 am

Thanks Mary. This issue is, of course, a long standing one in science; new technologies bring possible applications that might be beneficial or nefarious, depending on how they are used, and there are real issues in student measurement of any sort that call for vigilance re: issues of privacy, of dignity, and of fooling ourselves that we're measuring something that we think we are not.

Richard Day link
7/2/2012 01:00:25 pm

I'm glad you reiterated this last point. Skin response devices are only a baby-step from the much more disturbing electric shocks used by some special educators. Please keep reminding your readers of the necessary cautions.

Deirdre Mundy
7/8/2012 04:31:35 pm

1. I thought the top picture (reading the Van Gogh book) was adorable as well, but I'm just a sucker for a happy kid with a book.

2. So the bracelets measure engagement--how do you tell WHAT the kid is engaged with? Is she studiously taking notes on the lecture, or deeply engaged in texting or doodling?

Is your daughter engaged in the video, or in a daydream, or in wondering when dinner will be done?

How do they work on an ADHD kid? My daughter can be incredibly engaged with many things in short succession. Frequently none of them us the thing I WANT her to be focusing on!

Mary Porter
7/8/2012 04:54:58 pm

Look at the lower right hand corner, Deirdre.

Dan Willingham
7/9/2012 02:31:20 am

@Deirdre the devices can't tell what's on students' minds, and it's very unlikely any device could do so reliably in the near future. (fMRI can do so IF the subject agrees to select from one of two things to think about, with the experimenter choosing the two choices.)

ezra abrams
8/1/2012 01:52:51 pm

I live in MA, and if this is what I heard on WBUR, boston public (NPR) radio recently: the gates foundation, along with some other super rich people (waltons) has an organization or group that funds pseudograss roots educational reform efforts.
One thing these pseudo grass roots organizations work for is teacher testing.
Here in MA, these groups threatened to put an initiative on the ballot requiring teacher testing and non seniority rules
The pseudo grass roots group has so much money, the threat is valid, and as a result the teachers unions supported a weaker bill in the legislature

Now my point is, regardless of where you stand on the issue of teacher testing an relaxing seniority rules, this was a display of almost facsist power - a small group of ultra wealthy people, accountable to no one but themselves, are forcing educational policy in the state of MA without any public discussion.

I find this appalling; that these rich people have arrogated to themselves the right to dictate what happens in my childs classroom.

I am also suspicious of anyhthing backed by B Gates; if it works twice as well as windows, it will be a bloody disaster


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