{"id":15575,"date":"2017-03-07T01:48:50","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T01:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.golive.clarku.edu\/news\/2017\/03\/06\/clark-professor-students-find-the-humanity-in-computer-research\/"},"modified":"2025-05-19T09:55:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T13:55:07","slug":"clark-professor-students-find-the-humanity-in-computer-research","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/2017\/03\/06\/clark-professor-students-find-the-humanity-in-computer-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Clark professor, students find the humanity in computer research"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n At top: John Magee meets with LEEP Fellow Rafael Zuniga ’18.\n

Clark University computer scientist John Magee<\/a> applies his expertise in human-computer interaction to help others – people with disabilities and, more recently, middle-school students. And by inviting Clark LEEP Fellows<\/a> and other undergraduates to join his research projects, he’s giving students the opportunity to do the same.<\/p>\n

“There are a lot of opportunities in this research to improve people’s lives. That’s my main motivation,” says Magee, assistant professor of computer science.<\/p>\n

Recently, Magee<\/a> and his collaborators at Boston University<\/a>, University of Massachusetts Amherst<\/a> and Worcester Polytechnic Institute<\/a> began a four-year project to develop Smartutors, an online tool that would employ advanced computer vision techniques to measure middle-school students’ emotions as they tackle math lessons. Based on that data, the tool would adjust and personalize the learning experience to keep students engaged.<\/p>\n

The project, titled “Detecting, Predicting and Remediating Student Affect and Grit Using Computer Vision,” has been awarded nearly $2.5 million in grants from the National Science Foundation’s<\/a> Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies Program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“We’re trying to create more automatic estimates of what students’ emotional state is, how engaged they are and whether they’re frustrated,” Magee explains. “The computer vision analyzes their faces and expressions. Along with a computer camera, we’re using existing visual recognition software in new ways to see which face expressions correspond to a student’s various emotional states.”<\/p>\n

The researchers are studying the experiences of more than 1,600 New England students using the online MathSpring<\/a> tutoring system. Developed by faculty at UMass Amherst and WPI, MathSpring is used by teachers to improve and assess mathematics skills in middle and high school students and prepare them for standardized tests.<\/p>\n

Magee is working closely with BU Computer Science Professors Margrit Betke and Stan Sclaroff<\/a> to refine computer vision techniques.<\/p>\n

“I also am analyzing mouse movements as students use the smart tutor as an indicator of their engagement and levels of frustration,” he says.<\/p>\n

Magee already has involved Clark undergraduates in the project. Jiri Roznovjak ’18 conducted preliminary research, and three others – Lyle Pierson Stachecki ’17, Mishel Sikder ’18 and Jason Vazquez-Li ’17 – worked on related projects. Over the next several years, Magee plans to involve more students.\n<\/p>\n

Improving access to technology<\/h2>\n

Since receiving his doctorate from Boston University and coming to Clark as a visiting assistant professor in 2011, Magee has collaborated with BU researchers on a number of projects. He also has invited Clark undergraduates to work in Boston with his collaborators and their doctoral students. Last summer, six undergraduates – Roznovjak, Vazquez-Li and LEEP Fellows Pierson Stachecki, Sikder, Trung Ngo ’18 and Rafael Zuniga ’18 – conducted research at BU.<\/p>\n

Magee began researching computer vision, an interdisciplinary field that studies how computers process and analyze digital imagery, while a doctoral student at BU. But after meeting people with disabilities who sought to improve their access to technology, he expanded his research focus.<\/p>\n

For several years, he and his colleagues worked closely with Rick Hoyt<\/a>, a 1993 BU alumnus with spastic quadriplegia and cerebral palsy who became famous for his 30 years of participation – in a wheelchair pushed by his father – in the Boston Marathon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hoyt, who can’t speak or use his hands, communicates by using a computer via a button that he presses with his head. At BU, he helped test the Camera Mouse<\/a>, a motion-tracking mouse interface. Developed by Boston College<\/a> and BU researchers, the Camera Mouse employs a webcam to link movement in a person’s face or head to a computer mouse controlling the cursor on a screen.<\/p>\n

“The Camera Mouse has had over 3 million downloads since it was made available in 2000. It means a lot to me that I contributed to something that has been used by so many people to improve their lives.”<\/p>\n