The field of delivering educational materials to students and professional who are not on site is referred to as “distance education” or “distance learning.” One of the concerns in this field of education is to ensure that the participant is present while the course or seminar is being presented. This concern arises because there is no proctor on site while the educational material is being delivered. The concern is exacerbated, somewhat, by the fact that more and more participants are viewing distance learning content asynchronously within their home or office without any peers to encourage attention to the presented materials. In fact, more and more content is available to stream, download or otherwise play on a single machine on a time schedule that best suits each individual participant.
Traditionally, gauging the user's presence has been addressed by a challenge to the user to press a button or input a code into a telephone or computer to confirm presence at one or more times during or at the end of the program. While this approach ensures that the person is present, it does little to ensure that the user is paying attention during delivery of the distance learning content. As one extreme example, a course can be streamed to a computer while the user is reading and sending dozens of email messages, and, therefore, there can be great gaps in the attention given to the presented content.
Thus, while the user may be present, there have been no systems or methods developed to better ensure the user's continued attention to the distance learning content itself. Nor have any systems or methods been developed to monitor and respond to other actions taken by the participant concurrently during the presentation of distance learning content. The present invention addresses one or more of these and other problems in the art.