Online Learning Engagement Recognition Using Bidirectional Long-Term Recurrent Convolutional Networks

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors, 

I read with interest your work. Learning engagement is a stimulating topic encompassing many cognitive, emotional, perceptual, motivational and contextual aspects. It has been interesting to see how you addressed this challenge with two elements of novelty: online learning, and deep learning methodology. 

Besides those strengths, I think your paper still needs to be improved. 

The introduction needs more references and more support by existing literature. More specific suggestions can be found later in this comment. In general, I would try to merge the paragraphs 1 (Introduction) and 2 (Literature review). 

I would specify ethical implications of your study, and if any specific permissions to Ethical Committees have been asked to collect data. 

I would also enlarge your discussion paragraphs, which should not be organized with bullet points. In more detail, I would not focus only on the technological challenges of your methodology, but also on the possible implications resulting from the use of this technology in a real educational contexts. What are, in your view, advantages and drawbacks? What did other Authors publish on similar topics? Do you prospect a specific management of those data during a lesson? How would the teacher use them and what kind of strategies could be used to respond moment by moment to the information given by the device? Again, are there any possible ethical concerns in strictly monitoring the engagement of students? 

Here there are more specific suggestions:

- Line 7: I would delete that "And" at the beginning of the sentence; 

- Line 13: please end the series of keywords with a dot; 

- Between the lines 18 and 25: those arguments should be supported by some literature references. For example: 

1) Pirrone, C.; Varrasi, S.; Platania, G.A.; Castellano, S. Face-to-face and online learning: The role of technology in students’ metacognition. In Proceedings of the First Workshop on Technology Enhanced Learning Environments for Blended Education, Foggia, Italy, 21–22 January 2021

2) D. Lee, S. L. Watson, W. R. Watson, The Relationships Between Self-Efficacy, Task Value, and Self-Regulated Learning Strategies in Massive Open Online Courses, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (2020), 23-39. doi: 10.19173/irrodl.v20i5.4389

3) S. Sutarto, D. P. Sari, I. Fathurrochman, Teacher strategies in online learning to increase students’ interest in learning during COVID-19 pandemic, Jurnal Konseling dan Pendidikan (2020). doi:10.29210/147800

4) Pirrone, C., Di Corrado, D., Privitera, A., Castellano, S., & Varrasi, S. (2022). Students' mathematics anxiety at distance and in-person learning conditions during COVID-19 pandemic: are there any differences? An exploratory study. Education Sciences (MDPI), 12(6), 379. ISSNe: 2227-7102. https://doi.org/10.3390/ educsci12060379 

And related works.

- Same as above in the lines between 26 and 38, with specific literature; 

- Line 47: the word "behavior" is repeated twice; 

- Line 49: add a space after the dot; 

- Line 73: the word "accepted" is repeated twice; 

- Line 103, please add a space before the bracket; 

- Line 166: "male" and "female" should be plural; 

- I would avoid to put the same title at paragraphs 5 and 5.3; 

- In general, check all the text looking for other typos. 

In conclusion, yet interesting, your manuscript still needs to be improved. I support its publication after major revision.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

In the Abstract, the problem statement and results and conclusion are missing.

In the introduction section, the following must be provided as

Problem statement and motivation

In the Introduction, detailed research background and motivation should be provided.

In the introduction section, the paper organisation paragraph is missing.

Grammatical mistakes are found in the paper, such as spacing issues between the words and references.

 The conclusion should support with data /results.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment！

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper show an interesting way to determine the student's engagement during online class.  Although the usage of video to determine the student's performance was good but it has many flaws. The chances to missclassify is very high especially when dealing with students postures. This sometimes depends on the natural characteristics of the students because sometimes the posture due to other factors and not from online learning. Did you make any comparison with other method(s)? I suggest that you include a comparison based on their exam or test result that could shows that low engagement performance produce poor result and high engagement produce good result. Just give two or three samples would be good enough.

Author Response

Please see the attachment！

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors, 

thank you for your responses and for your thorough revision. My concerns have been effectively addressed. I support the publication of the manuscript.