UV9920V3 – Eye tracking technology: A training workshop on methods for psychological and educational research
Course description
Schedule, syllabus and examination date
Course content
Eye tracking technology is becoming increasingly affordable and technically accessible, and offers unprecedented detail into the study of mental processes at the core of educational and psychological research. More and more researchers realize that incorporation of eye tracking in their research methods arsenal boosts their research productivity and efficiency in uncovering the mechanisms underlying learning and skilled performance. This training workshop is designed to allow researchers with no prior experience to learn enough about this technology, understand the opportunities and challenges involved, and to familiarize themselves in hands-on sessions, so that they will be competent (and feel confident) enough to incorporate this method in their own research, either independently or as part of a research group.
The content of the course is structured as follows:
An introductory background will be provided in Day 1, concerning eye tracking technology, including equipment and data.
Days 2–4 will expand from the introductory foundation to provide concrete training in topics of high relevance for educational and psychological research. Lectures will be given by internationally recognized experts in eye tracking, covering an advanced topic from a theoretical point of view and presenting concrete research examples, pointing out challenges and solutions.
Two supervised hands-on sessions each day will provide opportunity for familiarization with the procedures and interaction with experienced researchers to address practical issues.
Day 5 will be devoted to (supervised) hands-on work by the attendees, working in groups on entire mini-studies, from conception to presentation, including data collection and preliminary analysis. Doctoral students taking the course for credit will be required to conduct further work on their mini-study, including complete data processing and analysis, as well as writing up and submitting a full research report with conclusions and limitations.
The workshop is supported and co-organized by the Department of Special Needs Education, the research group Literacy and Numeracry (LiNCon), and the Oslo Assessment, Internvention, and Learning Lab at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, with additional support by SR Research Ltd., and is co-funded by the Norwegian Research Council through IT events support (arrangement st?tte innenfor IKT project number 310348).
Learning outcome
Upon successful completion of this workshop, attendees are expected to be able to incorporate eye tracking methodology into their research, including design, equipment setup, data collection and basic data analysis. To achieve this goal, the workshop will cover the following:
A. Introductory topics
- Eye-tracking equipment, principles of operation, calibration, resolution, noise, recording modes, lab layout.
- Eye tracking raw data, event detection, preprocessing, variable computation and interpretation, visualizations.
B. Advanced topics (tentative)
- Eye movements in reading.
- Multivariate statistical analysis for eye tracking data
- Coordinating attention for vision and speech
- Eye tracking with children: Challenges and opportunities
- Eye gaze as an index of cognitive planning and processing
- The pupillary response as an index of cognitive effort
- Hands-on sessions
- Calibration and validation
- Passage reading
- Synchronous voice recording
- Remote tracking mode
- Arithmetic problem solving
- Pupil size tracking
Admission
PhD candidates at the Faculty of Educational Sciences will be given priority, but it is also possible for others to apply for the course. However, applicants must at least have a Master's degree.
Candidates admitted to the PhD programme at the Faculty of Educational Sciences (UV) should apply through Studentweb, and in addition register through this application form.
Other applicants may apply using this application form.
Registration deadline: The course is cancelled.
Prerequisites
Recommended previous knowledge
As a minimum requirement, all participants must have basic knowledge of experimental research methods and basic statistics.
We recommend that the candidates are familiar with psychological and/or educational research in one or more areas such as, for example, reading, mathematical skills, attention, cognitive control, language development etc.
Teaching
The course is cancelled.
The course covers 30 hours (distributed over 5 days).
Date and time: May 4–8, 2020.
Location: Room 231, Helga Eng’s building.
You will find the timetable at the semester webpage for the course, see also link to preliminary schedule.
Examination
1 credit point for course participation (80% attendance is required).
4 credit points for course participation and approved paper (80% attendance is required).
Papers are to be submitted electronically to Kathrine H?egh-Omdal (kathrine.hoegh-omdal@isp.uio.no).
The paper should be a complete research paper (4000–6000 words) in APA format with Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion sections, fully presenting one mini-study with relevant (brief) background and rationale, detailed description of data collection and analysis methods, full results (including statistical analysis and relevant visualizations), and (brief) discussion to interpret the findings. Data and scripts (compressed text files) should be provided as appendixes/supplementary material.
Deadline for paper submission is: June 10, 2020.
Grading scale
Grades are awarded on a pass/fail scale. Read more about the grading system.
Evaluation
Evaluation form.