Who is the expert? Analyzing gaze data to predict expertise level in collaborative applications

In this paper, we analyze complex gaze tracking data in a collaborative task and apply machine learning models to automatically predict skill-level differences between participants. Specifically, we present findings that address the two primary challenges for this prediction task: (1) extracting meaningful features from the gaze information, and (2) casting the prediction task as a machine learning (ML) problem. The results show that our approach based on profile hidden Markov models are up to 96% accurate and can make the determination as fast as one minute into the collaboration, with only 5% of gaze observations registered. We also provide a qualitative analysis of gaze patterns that reveal the relative expertise level of the paired users in a collaborative learning user study.