VIRTUAL TEACHING & CLASSROOMS

Amey Nirgude (PGP-16-010)

Ankita Mathur (PGP-16-017)
Anuj Popli (PGP-16-019)
Shivendra Singh (PGP-16-068)
Vatsala Jain (PGP-16-079)

Contents
1.

Problem Statement....................................................................................................................................................3

2.

Rationale behind selection of the problem:................................................................................................................3

3.

Solutions Architecture................................................................................................................................................3

4.

Working...................................................................................................................................................................... 4

5.

Value Addition............................................................................................................................................................5

6.

Business Intelligence and Analytics...........................................................................................................................5

1. Problem Statement
Worldwide the education system is evolving at a rapid pace. The requirements of students are also changing accordingly.
All the students are not at the same level and do not understand the same language. Also, teachers have to handle a large
number of students in the classroom, and it is not possible to adjust their teaching style for a particular student. There is
a need to personalise the education system for each student so that they can reap the maximum benefits and gain
sufficient knowledge. We opine that advanced technology can bring about a solution to the same. Our aim is to
revolutionize the current pedagogy in the educational sector by utilizing disruptive innovations in artificial intelligence,
distributed systems (cloud), virtual reality, biometrics, machine learning and develop a reusable and globally accepted
evaluation and teaching standard.

2. Rationale behind selection of the problem:

Problems faced by students with the traditional education system are:

Education has been imparted in closed classrooms with a single teacher catering to multiple children, doling out
the same lecture to each child, irrespective of their grasping capabilities, language or understanding. Hence, it
is difficult to address the needs of both a slow and gifted learner at the same time. Everyone has to adjust to a
uniform teaching tool.
Class durations are fixed and not extendable because of fixed schedules that every institution follows.
A large classroom hinders a child curiosity if they are ashamed of asking doubts or expressing their opinions.
Inefficiencies on part of the instructor reflect onto the childs education since quality teachers are not available
at every place.
Textbooks and rigid curriculums restrict the scope of learning for students and teachers, who can seldom
deviate from the prescribed pedagogy and explore innovative ideas and concepts. This also encourages rote
learning among the students.
Currently, remote and distance education solutions lack the availability in the desired language and proper
interaction with teachers on the other end. Also, gazing at the indifferent computer screens for long hours
dilapidate the concentration power of students.
For students suffering from disabilities or for those with critical sickness spanning a long period time,
traditional classroom learning is a hurdle.
Evaluations are done manually and hence are time consuming and slow. Sometimes, the gap between tests and
results is so long that students often forget about the test.
Collecting a database of Intelligence, Emotional and Adversity Quotients of people from different
demographics can also enable companies to target recruitment more efficiently in the long run.

3. Solutions Architecture
To address the problems of accessible, personalized and immersive education for children of today we are proposing a
novel Virtual Teacher wearable solution based on virtual reality, artificial intelligence, emotion recognition and
cloud based distributed system.
Device Specifications

The device will be fashioned as a wearable virtual reality spectacle, provided by cameras both on the inside and outside
of the device and a speaker microphone for verbal input and a hearing device. It will have HD screen for display of
image. The hardware will consist of graphic card, digital to analog convertor, chargeable DC battery and a basic
software to support voice to text conversion software and the virtual instructor program. The device will be both
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled. Sensors for 360-degree head tracking to enable students neck movement and immersive
experiences will all be packed into the device box.

4. Working
The proposed solution relies on voice recognition and facial emotion recognition for purpose of interpretation of input
from the student. For processing and result analysis the capabilities of a cloud server that hosts the actual artificial
intelligence software utilizing the learning server as a SaaS (Software as a Service) facility . For internal processes the
learning server will utilize Database management systems to store the following information:

Time spent by student on each topic

Number of doubts raised per topic
Problems solved by student and the time taken to solve them
Language used by student
Evaluation results for student
Emotional profile of the student (Facial patterns)
Knowledge archives related to each course developed through interviews with education professionals across
the world

The project encompasses 3 major modules learning module, doubt resolution module and student evaluation module.
Learning module
At the core of the learning module is the virtual teacher software installed in the VR headset. The student will be able to
wear the device and will be immersed into a classroom environment augmented by an animated virtual teacher that will
deliver the lecture like a human instructor. The lesson will be initiated by the student by mentioning the language and
choice of topic. The voice recognition software in the device shall record and interpret the students voice command,
followed by making a command packet to be sent to the learning server hosted on the cloud through internet. Once the
command is received on the learning server the server shall parse the message received, fetch the knowledge corpus
from its database and make a note of the topic requisitioned by student against the students unique ID. The data will be
structured as per the students past profile and then sent to the VR device through internet. When the data is received by
the device, it is loaded onto the Virtual instructor, who then delivers the lecture to the student. (Appendix: Figure 1)

Doubt resolution and student profiling module

The camera on the inside of the device shall continuously provide visual feed to the Virtual Teacher interface
which will forward the image to the learning server. If the learning server senses a change of emotion and high
attributes of confusion, fear or depression on the students feed it shall respond to the same with more
elaborate examples, also making a note of the same in the students profile for evaluation and revision
purposes of the problematic topic. The same procedure can also be initiated by the student verbally asking a
doubt. This will imitate real - time interaction of a student and teacher. Now when the student will revise or
appear for evaluation this topic will be more extensively covered. Also the pace of the virtual instructor will
be slowed till the pace of the student picks up. This data can be utilized for curriculum designing later as well
for other students. All students of the same grade will be analyzed and the centralized knowledge corpus will
be updated.(Appendix :Scenario2)

Examination module
The outside camera will be used to stream the text written by student to VR interface. Through image
recognition the data will be converted to text and sent to learning server on cloud. The server will analyze the
data received and evaluate the input and send back results. The evaluation will be done based on student
profile utilizing the answers available in corpus and evaluation intelligence based on artificial intelligence.
Once evaluated results will be sent to the VR device over internet and will be displayed to the student. Based
on this improvement area will be suggested and tutorials will be made available to the student. The results will
also be stored on the database of learning server and can be used to generate personalized reports and also
available for analysis by educational institutes and academicians for drafting syllabus accordingly. (Appendix:
Scenario3)

5. Value Addition

Experiential Learning: It is an Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality based personalized learning classroom
cum learning centre, to engage students with gamified AR/VR lessons and to promote creativity across subjects
such as anatomy, biology, geography, history, physics, and astronomy and enhance the standards of teaching
through student problem solving which may be inhibited in a normal classroom.
Intelligent Classroom: Comes with ability of biometric and pattern recognition.The intelligent classroom is
connected to the cloud server with data push/fetch mechanism and can retrieve data to create virtual learning
environments. For eg: During a history lesson Virtual teacher can project the Pyramids of Giza in the classroom
Facial Recognition for Doubt Solving: Intelligent algorithms for pattern recognition coupled with image
processing will be used to identify facial expression of students, to identify muscle movements and to check if a
student is facing a doubt in a particular topic. Teaching methods of the virtual teacher can be adjusted
accordingly by fetching more learning data from the cloud server. Moreover, over the period of time data
warehousing can be done for such topics in the curriculum and teaching methodologies can be modified
accordingly
Remote and Distance Learning: It can be a one stop solution for students residing in remote locations in rural
India. Also for eg: If a student is sick or is unable to attend school, the student can attend classes from their
homes
Student Profiling: It can be used to create student profiles and enhance the overall learning experience.
Whenever a student asks a question, based on the facial recognition of the students facial expressions along
with the tonality of the voice, the virtual teachers can reframe answers to match the students understanding
level.
Adaptive Classroom suggestions: Based on students interest (based on types of questions a student asks and
pattern recognition), suggestions can be made to the student for further reading material
Scalable model : Model can be implemented seamlessly, independent of the location or the size of the
classroom
Language Barrier: with years of training data sets and machine learning, the solution can be trained to deliver
innovative pedagogy in several languages

6. Business Intelligence and Analytics

Data collected from classroom implementations of the solutions can be used for varied purposes such as:

Curriculum Updation: We can collaborate with NCERT and other state boards to analyse the data captured
during various classroom sessions to identify the topics where students have the most doubts. Accordingly,
curriculum could be updated to make the concepts much easier or to involve more practise problems
Recruitment and Career Profiling:Using the facial data captured along with intelligence and emotional
quotients and various other psychometric parameters, big data analytics can be used to come up with several
quantitative parameters which can be used by recruiting companies to shortlist students
Questions Data bank warehousing (Adaptive Learning): Based on how students attempt problems, a
repository of questions can be created categorising questions based on difficulty, class, question attempt ratio.
Such data warehouse can be used to create adaptive learning standardized tests to test student ability which
would have mix of questions.

APPENDIX

Prototype Design of the wearable

device