Towards Automatic Detection of Participant Attention in Virtual Meetings

Online meetings have become a norm in recent years. The rapid adaptation of virtual meetings can be attributed to COVID-19 to some degree but also to the usability of virtual meeting platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams. However, the fundamental challenge of gauging participants' attention in the meetings still persists. This research paper discussed our attempt towards detecting participants' attention in virtual meetings. We conducted a pilot study to examine changes in eye gaze movement when the participants engaged in a secondary activity in addition to attending a virtual meeting. A computer-vision-based approach was utilized to quantify the eye gaze movement. The study results reveal that, in comparison to the control trial, the participants' eye gaze movements increased significantly when they were involved in the secondary activity of typing a document, indicating the feasibility of utilizing the software-based eye-tracking approach for detecting attention in virtual meetings. The approach has the potential to be a practical application as it requires no eye-tracking hardware.