  Online remote learning has certain advantages, such as higher flexibility and
greater inclusiveness. However, a caveat is the teachers' limited ability to
monitor student interaction during an online class, especially while teachers
are sharing their screens. We have taken feedback from 12 teachers experienced
in teaching undergraduate-level online classes on the necessity of an attention
tracking tool to understand student engagement during an online class. This
paper outlines the design of such a monitoring tool that automatically tracks
the attentiveness of the whole class by tracking students' gazes on the screen
and alerts the teacher when the attention score goes below a certain threshold.
We assume the benefits are twofold; 1) teachers will be able to ascertain if
the students are attentive or being engaged with the lecture contents and 2)
the students will become more attentive in online classes because of this
passive monitoring system. In this paper, we present the preliminary design and
feasibility of using the proposed tool and discuss its applicability in
augmenting online classes. Finally, we surveyed 31 students asking their
opinion on the usability as well as the ethical and privacy concerns of using
such a monitoring tool.
