Individual and Group-wise Classroom Seating Experience: Effects on Student Engagement in Different Courses
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Seating location in the classroom can affect student engagement, involvement, attention and academic performance by providing better visibility, improved movement, and discussion participation. For example, sitting at the front of the classroom is a popular choice for students pursuing good academic performance. This research investigates how individual and group-wise classroom seating experiences affect student engagement using wearable physiological sensors. We have conducted an in-situ experiment in a high school and collected survey and wearable data from 23 students over 10 courses for four weeks. We aim to answer the following research questions: How do the seating proximity between students relate to their perceived learning engagement? How do the group seating behaviours of students relate to their physiological-based engagement measurements (i.e., physiological arousal and physiological synchrony)? The experiment results show that the individual and group-wise classroom seating experience is associated with perceived student engagement and physiological-based engagement measured from electrodermal activity. We also find that students sitting near each other are more likely to have similar learning engagement and tend to have high physiological synchrony. This research opens up opportunities on exploring the implications of flexible seating arrangements and has great potential to maximize student engagement by suggesting intelligent seating choices in the future.
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