EduSense aims to improve the well-being and professional development of teachers, while also promoting student engagement and learning, by combining pedagogical research, advanced AI, and environmental sensing. At the heart of EduSense is the development of a smart feedback tool that helps teachers reflect on their work, support professional growth, and manage the daily pressures of the classroom. By analyzing a variety of data sources, the tool is designed to provide personalized feedback in real time, after lessons, and over the long term, offering practical and actionable insights that can support teachers’ well-being, classroom practices, and student outcomes.
Why It Matters
"Teaching is intellectually, socially, and emotionally demanding. Yet many teachers have no structured way to reflect on how the emotional, physical, and social conditions of the classroom affect their performance and well-being. EduSense helps fill this gap by offering a clearer, data-informed picture of what is happening in the classroom," says University Researcher Martha Arbayani Zaidan.
The EduSense system is not meant to tell teachers how they feel, but rather to highlight patterns and stress signals they might not notice during the intensity of teaching. These insights can help educators make informed changes to their work environment or teaching methods, ultimately benefiting both themselves and their students.
What EduSense Looks At
EduSense builds a rich, holistic understanding of the classroom by combining several streams of information:
- Smartwatches worn by teachers measure things, such as heart rate and skin response, which can show signs of stress.
- Eyetrackers to study teachers' visual attention.
- Sensors in the classroom check the temperature, noise, and air quality to see how the physical environment affects teaching and learning.
- Videos of the teacher is recorded to help the system analyze their facial expressions, mood and reactions to classroom events, using AI.
- Sound is recorded for analyzing the class contents and providing in-depth feedback for the teacher
- Quick surveys and short tasks are used to hear directly from teachers and students about how they feel and what they are learning.
All this information is kept safe and collected and processed using Microsoft’s secure cloud system. With these tools, EduSense helps us build better, healthier classrooms for both teachers and students.
How It Works and What’s Next
EduSense is currently in the prototype stage and under constant development.
"Once fully operational, it will offer teachers a clear dashboard with helpful feedback and suggestions. The goal is to support teacher well-being; help manage classroom challenges and offer ideas to improve teaching methods. For example, if the system notices that a teacher shows signs of stress during a certain type of lesson, it might suggest changes to the structure or style of that lesson to make things easier and more effective," says Zaidan.
To make sure the system works in real classrooms, researchers from the Centre for University Teaching and Learning (HYPE) at the Faculty of Educational Sciences are working closely with experts in computer science and environmental science from the Department of Computer Science and the Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR), both at the Faculty of Science. They test and validate the system using different methods, such as interviews with teachers, classroom observations, quick in-the-moment surveys (called ESM), and follow-up questionnaires.
Importantly, EduSense only records the teacher, not the students, when using video and audio. These recordings help the system understand how the teacher is feeling and reacting during a lesson, nothing more. By combining advanced technology with real classroom experience, EduSense aims to offer a tool that is both scientifically reliable and practically useful for supporting teachers in their everyday work.
Looking Ahead: Where EduSense is Headed
While EduSense is still under development, the goal is to test it in both primary and secondary schools as well as in university-level teacher education. The tool is designed to support a wide range of teaching environments and provide valuable insights into how emotional, social, and physical classroom factors affect both teachers and students.
The EduSense research program was initiated with support from Business Finland through its Co-Creation funding scheme and is being developed in close partnership with Microsoft. The team is now actively seeking additional funding to move into the testing and research phase, further improve the system, and eventually roll it out to educational settings across Finland and internationally.
EduSense demonstrates how human-centered AI, when combined with interdisciplinary research, can create learning environments where teachers thrive in their work. By bridging education, computing, and environmental science, the University of Helsinki is leading a movement towards classrooms that are not only smarter but also more supportive, sustainable, and inspiring for everyone inside them.