Investigation of Relationship Between Eye Gaze and Brain Waves towards Smart Sensing for E-learning

In recent years, we have witnessed a new trend of learning called e-learning where learners can take courses using electronic devices with Internet connection. Although e-learning is convenient because it removes temporal and spatial limitations, it is difficult to know whether the learner is really paying attention to the learning materials. To address this problem, we tried to use electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate a learner’s concentration in our previous study. However, our previous study relied on subjective evaluation, and there was no objective observation to relate the EEG signals to the learner’s concentration. Given this background, we compared eye gaze and EEG results to find the appropriate position and frequency band of EEG in e-learning in this study. We compared the EEG result obtained during a period when the subjects were watching a video lecture and that obtained during a period when the subjects were not watching, and determined that the viewing state could be predicted from EEG logistic regression and a support vector machine (SVM). The results suggested that measuring beta and gamma waves and examining the parietal and occipital regions are both effective.