Visualizing the Reading Activity of People Learning to Read

Area of Science:

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Educational Technology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Gaze data visualizations like scanpaths and heatmaps are task-independent.
• Task-specific visualizations can offer deeper insights into user behavior.
• Effective communication of complex data to non-experts is crucial in education.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop novel static and dynamic visualization techniques for children's reading activity.
• To communicate eye-tracking-derived reading skills to primary school teachers without technical backgrounds.
• To evaluate the effectiveness and utility of these visualizations for educational purposes.

Main Methods:

• Development of specialized static and dynamic visualization techniques for gaze data during reading tasks.
• User study involving primary school teachers to evaluate the developed visualizations.
• Qualitative and quantitative analysis of teacher feedback and perceived usefulness.

Main Results:

• Developed visualizations effectively communicate children's reading activity to teachers.
• Dynamic visualizations provide insights into individual student reading patterns.
• Static visualizations offer a group overview and highlight vocabulary usage.
• Teachers appreciated the visualizations differently based on their specific needs.

Conclusions:

• Tailored visualizations enhance the understanding of reading skills from eye-tracking data for educators.
• Dynamic and static visualizations serve distinct but complementary roles in assessing student reading.
• These tools can bridge the gap between eye-tracking technology and practical classroom application.