The Future of Education
Eye tracking for better understanding of students problem solving patterns in virtual laboratories
Zdena Lustigova, ass. prof. Charles university in Prague (Czech Republic)
Veronika Novotna, lecturer at Faculty of Medicine, Charles University in Prague, Pilsen, Czech Republic (Czech Republic)
Abstract
The eye tracking technique has been more and more popular. In last 10 years it has been successfully applied in many research fields including problem solving, behavioural and problem solving patterns, human computer interaction, and of course e-business.
Usually it is adopted to examine human visual attention based on the eye-mind assumption. In general, eye fixation location reflects attention and eye fixation duration reflects processing difficulty and amount of attention. Besides, according some studies, scan path patterns exhibit individuals’ cognitive strategies utilized in goal-oriented tasks.
But the use of e-tracking to help to reveal cognitive strategies while solving science (physics, biology, chemistry) problems is still quite rare. This paper is written by experienced researchers, who deal with eye tracking research in the areas of human-computer interaction and e-commerce since 2002. This time they present not only the research results, but also the methodology (SSRD) used, and practical teaching a learning tips, based on revealed behavioural and problem solving patterns of students, working with science applets in virtual laboratories.
