Understanding Academic Engagement and Context Through Multimodal Data

Abstract

The Internet has penetrated the life of adolescents and become a new space for learning, socializing and entertainment. Physical exercise and sleep remain crucial for the development of adolescents. However, the influence of these critical contextual factors on learning and life is insufficiently explored, partially due to the difficulty of measuring these factors. To bridge the gap, a semi-automated Day Reconstruction Method was proposed which leverages 24-hour multimodal data collected by smart wristband (Fitbit Versa), paired mobile phone (Red Mi 6), and time management application (RescueTime). A pilot study was conducted to verify the feasibility of this proposed method and is reported in this paper. As academic engagement among adolescents is widely concerned by stakeholders, this pilot study also explores the relationship between the aforementioned contextual factors and academic engagement. With some interesting patterns, revealed, this study contributes to furthering our understanding of how context shapes adolescents’ academic engagement using a more objective and nonintrusive method.