Previous studies have shown that artificial intelligence can be used to classify instruction-related activities in classroom videos. The automated classification of human activities, however, is vulnerable to biases in which the model performs substantially better or worse for different people groups. Although algorithmic bias has been highlighted as an important area for research in artificial intelligence in education, there have been few studies that empirically investigate potential bias in instruction-related activity recognition systems. In this paper, we report on an investigation of potential racial and skin tone biases in the automated classification of teachers’ activities in classroom videos. We examine whether a neural network’s classification of teachers’ activities differs with respect to teacher race and skin tone and whether differently balanced training datasets affect the performance of the neural network. Our results indicate that, under ordinary classroom lighting conditions, the neural network performs equally well regardless of teacher race or skin tone. Furthermore, our results suggest the balance of the training dataset with respect to teacher skin tone and race has a small—but not necessarily positive—effect on the neural network’s performance. Our study, however, also suggests the importance of quality lighting for accurate classification of teacher-related instructional activities for teachers of color. We conclude with a discussion of our mixed findings, the limitations of our study, and potential directions for future research.

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Investigating Racial and Skin Tone Biases in Automated Classification of Teachers’ Activities in Classroom Videos

  • James Drimalla,
  • Matthew Korban,
  • Jonathan Foster

摘要

Previous studies have shown that artificial intelligence can be used to classify instruction-related activities in classroom videos. The automated classification of human activities, however, is vulnerable to biases in which the model performs substantially better or worse for different people groups. Although algorithmic bias has been highlighted as an important area for research in artificial intelligence in education, there have been few studies that empirically investigate potential bias in instruction-related activity recognition systems. In this paper, we report on an investigation of potential racial and skin tone biases in the automated classification of teachers’ activities in classroom videos. We examine whether a neural network’s classification of teachers’ activities differs with respect to teacher race and skin tone and whether differently balanced training datasets affect the performance of the neural network. Our results indicate that, under ordinary classroom lighting conditions, the neural network performs equally well regardless of teacher race or skin tone. Furthermore, our results suggest the balance of the training dataset with respect to teacher skin tone and race has a small—but not necessarily positive—effect on the neural network’s performance. Our study, however, also suggests the importance of quality lighting for accurate classification of teacher-related instructional activities for teachers of color. We conclude with a discussion of our mixed findings, the limitations of our study, and potential directions for future research.