NaMemo: Enhancing Lecturers' Interpersonal Competence of Remembering Students' Names

TL;DR

NaMemo is a face-recognition system designed to help university lecturers remember and address students by name, improving interpersonal rapport in large classes.

Contribution

This paper introduces NaMemo, a novel real-time face-recognition system tailored for enhancing lecturers' ability to remember student names in large classes.

Findings

System design and pilot feasibility demonstrated.

Plans for evaluating impact on learning and teaching.

Considerations for privacy implications.

Abstract

Addressing students by their names helps a teacher to start building rapport with students and thus facilitates their classroom participation. However, this basic yet effective skill has become rather challenging for university lecturers, who have to handle large-sized (sometimes exceeding 100) groups in their daily teaching. To enhance lecturers' competence in delivering interpersonal interaction, we developed NaMemo, a real-time name-indicating system based on a dedicated face-recognition pipeline. This paper presents the system design, the pilot feasibility test, and our plan for the following study, which aims to evaluate NaMemo's impacts on learning and teaching, as well as to probe design implications including privacy considerations.