Researchers develop a virtual elearning teacher that responds to learner emotions

A research team at Massey University in Auckland have created a virtual teacher called Eve that is part of a new teaching system.

The Massey scientists, led by Dr Hossein Sarrafzadeh at the Auckland-based Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences have developed the system initially for "one-to-one maths teaching with eight-year-olds."

"The animated Eve (with a human-sounding voice) can ask questions, give feedback, discuss questions and solutions and show emotion. To develop the software for this system the Massey team observed children and their interactions with teachers and captured them on thousands of images."

"From these images of facial expression, gestures and body movements they developed programs that would capture and recognise facial expression, body movement, and (via a mouse) heart rate and skin resistance."

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School Chat....

A very interesting concept to discuss with your students....computers that can detect and react to human emotion.

This new technology could take computer/human interaction to a new level.

Will emotion now be a part of digital virtual worlds such as social network websites?

How will this "human factor" be able to help businesses build global networks?

Could this have an impact on reducing a global carbon footprint?

Where does this take the learning classroom of the future? As a life-long-learner, will we all be assigned a virtual tutor that could adapt to our career pathway and keep learning from a global knowledge gateway?

Will the virtual teacher become the news aggregate of the future?

So many questions.........