Real-Time Teacher Assistance in Technologically-Augmented Smart Classrooms

—The role of the teacher in the classroom environment is of crucial importance for the effectiveness of the learning process. However, recent studies on the technological enhancement of education have shown that teacher’s activities are not adequately supported, as the focus remains rather on the student’s side. This article discusses a learner-centric approach towards supporting instructors in improving the teaching and learning processes in ambient educational environments. The proposed solution introduces an intelligent multi-agent infrastructure that monitors unobtrusively the students’ activities and identifies potential learning weaknesses and pitfalls that need to be addressed at an individual or classroom level. Such real-time insights enable the instructor to intervene providing help and adapt the teaching process according to the needs of the class. For that to be achieved, several applications have been developed: (i) a real-time classroom activity visualizer, (ii) a behavioral reasoner that aims to identify common behaviors by analyzing classroom activities, (iii) a statistics records manager targeting to showcase students’ progress and performance at both an individual and classroom level, and finally (iv) a series of mini-tools that enhance typical procedures that can be found in conventional classrooms, such as the classroom attendance record, the schedule manager, etc. Following the system’s description, findings of a preliminary expert-based evaluation are presented and some concluding remarks regarding the deployment of the system in real-life environments are formulated. Finally, potential future extensions of the system are proposed.