Toward a Systematic Survey on Wearable Computing for Education Applications

Technology is gradually being incorporated as an integral part of education. This technology includes the now pervasive presence of the Internet, but also the inclusion of devices that are worn by teachers and learners. Wearable devices have greatly facilitated data acquisition of educational subjects. This article provides an overview of what and how wearable devices have been used in education and in what contexts. Summaries of existing research in this area are organized according to a three-layered data framework. We begin by presenting the technical characteristics of four types of wearable devices, and comparing the data from them with physiological data and behavioral data. Based on this, the preprocessing and analysis methods of these two types of data are discussed. Following that, we identified the six main applications that wearables and data analytics are enabling education. Furthermore, three key challenges of using wearable devices have been identified. We suggest that future research should be enriched from equipment innovation, application scenarios, and feedback methods in order to make wearable devices more widely used in a production environment, and augment the analysis performed to improve teaching, learning, or the educational context where it occurs.