SURF Onderwijsdagen 2026

Learning to see: Exploring eye-tracking in education and beyond
As a lecturer, how do you know what a student is actually looking at while learning? And how do you help students not only to look, but also to see what is important?
In many professional degree programs, students learn complex visual tasks, such as examining the eye, interpreting medical images, or navigating digital simulations. Beyond knowing what to do, they must learn where to look, how to recognize relevant visual features, and how to interpret what they see.

Our recent research (2024; 2026) highlights a challenge: both experienced lecturers and near-peer tutors often leave important aspects of their visual expertise implicit when demonstrating complex tasks. Explaining where to look, what to look for, and why certain features matter is not as straightforward as it seems.

Could eye-tracking help make this invisible part of teaching and learning visible?
Building on our exploration at SURF Education Days 2024, we are developing a dual eye-tracking tool at eyeLAB at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences. By combining gaze data from lecturers and students, the tool aims to visualize their shared visual attention (joint visual attention), potentially supporting instruction, guidance, and feedback during complex professional tasks.
During this interactive session, you will experience eye-tracking firsthand with eye-tracking glasses and see how we can capture and visualize visual attention. We will introduce the educational potential of dual eye-tracking, drawing on our research and ongoing technological developments.
We will also explore applications beyond education, particularly in healthcare and eye care. What opportunities and limitations does eye-tracking present? Which technological and practical conditions influence its use? And what ethical questions arise when we increasingly monitor visual behavior? After all, does looking at the same thing necessarily mean seeing or understanding the same thing?

In this session, you will:

1. Experience eye-tracking firsthand and discover how gaze data visualizes attention.
2. Explore how dual eye-tracking and joint visual attention could support teaching and learning complex professional tasks.
3. Discover applications in healthcare and discuss technological, practical, and ethical challenges.

This session welcomes lecturers, educational developers, researchers, policymakers, and innovation managers. No technical knowledge is required.

Together, we will critically explore when, why, and under what conditions eye-tracking adds meaningful value to education and professional practice.