Towards the use of commercial wrist wearables in education

Abstract

This paper is about the use of commercial wrist wearables in education, more specifically, about how to support smart education in the context of new smart universities. Wrist wearable devices such smartwatches or smartbands include a variety of sensors that can be used to collect physiological and activity-related data about a subject, for example a learner or a teacher, and estimate insightful features about him. This paper reviews the current state of the art of projects and initiatives based on the use of these devices, the types of wearables available nowadays and the main problems and issues involved for educational purposes: data collection, data integration, sensor accuracy, etc. In the paper, we also introduce our developments towards the provision of sleep and stress indicators taking advantage of these devices. We distinguish among services for students, for teachers and for developers.