Exploring the applicability of portable EEG technology in unmanaged classroom settings and managed group experiments

In portable electroencephalography (EEG) technology (PEEGT) new fields of exploration emerge as PEEGT devices are agile and inexpensive. This is interesting to the educational field where research is often criticized for its lack of quantitative studies. Devices from Emotiv and Neurosky are widely used in educational research, but there is a lack of studies conducted in classroom settings and only a few studies include their own assessment of the EEG device. Given that attention is seen as a prerequisite to learning, the following question is obvious: what are the consequences for classroom teaching? We investigated, utilizing PEEGT, if it was possible to measure whether students paid attention, while simultaneously exploring the limits of the applicability of the chosen PEEGT equipment. In a classroom study, we sought to measure whether students paid attention to a lecturer-controlled classroom teaching. The experiments performed did not allow us to measure if the students paid attention to the teaching. Analysis of the results produced three possible explanations: 1. The method employed is not valid, 2. The attention metric used is not valid, 3. The MWM or prototype-based collection of data was unreliable. These questions were the background for a group study. We compared results from experiments with clearly defined tasks with the predicted results to establish whether the measurements were reliable. The experiments conducted verified the overall reliability of the MWM and the prototype. We also concluded that to measure attention with a high level of certainty, you need to repeat the trials. One solution to this problem may be to apply additional research tools besides PEEGT, e.g., heart rate (HR). We considered the validity of the method as well as the attention metric employed in light of the studies conducted. That triggered the following main questions: Is the comparative analysis between EEG data and observed somatic markers possible and reasonable? Is attention a phenomenon that is measurable and may be reasonably represented by one metric? Is our understanding of EEG data still so premature that it is difficult to interpret exactly what the waves tell us, especially in relation to complex phenomena like attention?