The use of facial expressions in measuring students’ interaction with distance learning environments during the COVID-19 crisis

Digital learning is becoming increasingly important in the crisis COVID-19 and is widespread in most countries. The proliferation of smart devices and 5G telecommunications systems are contributing to the development of digital learning systems as an alternative to traditional learning systems. Digital learning includes blended learning, online learning, and personalized learning which mainly depends on the use of new technologies and strategies, so digital learning is widely developed to improve education and combat emerging disasters such as COVID-19 diseases. Despite the tremendous benefits of digital learning, there are many obstacles related to the lack of digitized curriculum and collaboration between teachers and students. Therefore, many attempts have been made to improve the learning outcomes through the following strategies: collaboration, teacher convenience, personalized learning, cost and time savings through professional development, and modeling. In this study, facial expressions and heart rates are used to measure the effectiveness of digital learning systems and the level of learners’ engagement in learning environments. The results showed that the proposed approach outperformed the known related works in terms of learning effectiveness. The results of this research can be used to develop a digital learning environment.