Learner's Emotional State Research Articles

Learning with self-generated drawings and the impact of learners' emotional states.

The present study examined the influence of emotional states when learning with self-generated drawings. It was assumed that learners in a positive emotional state would profit from learning with self-generated drawings, while learners in a negative emotional state would not profit from this strategy to the same extent but would rather benefit through reading. University students (N = 123) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions resulting from a 2 × 2 design with self-generated drawings (yes vs. no) and emotional state (positive vs. negative) as independent variables. Results showed that learning with self-generated drawings was more beneficial for a following transfer test than learning without drawings - irrespective of a learner's emotional state. The quality of self-generated drawings predicted the learning outcomes of the retention and pictorial test, but not for transfer. Missing effects of emotional states and the missing interaction with self-generated drawings will be discussed.

Improving Learners’ Assessment and Evaluation in Crisis Management Serious Games: An Emotion-based Educational Data Mining Approach

For several years, there has been growing interest in the development and use of serious games to improve individuals' quality of life and behavior. In particular, Crisis Management Serious Games (CMSG) have shown their potential for teaching people both technical and soft skills related to managing crises in a safe environment while reducing training costs. To improve their effectiveness, several evaluation approaches of CMSGs have been proposed. However, despite its interest, the learner's emotional state is often neglected. As a result, learners may end up with a deep frustration or boredom. Therefore, we propose an Educational Data Mining (EDM) approach to evaluate learners' affective states in collaborative CMSGs. This approach is applied to assess learners' engagement during a game-based evacuation scenario aiming to train and to raise awareness among students of a university on evacuating the present persons during a fire emergency situation. The experimental results confirm the major predictions of learners' affective dynamics and uncover novel findings namely the presence of transitions from boredom to frustration and from frustration to confusion. Our study shows that combining gaming and emotion aspects under an EDM approach to evaluate CMSGs is interesting since it gives reliable results in a less invasive way.

Searching for the role of emotions in e-learning

This special issue of Learning and Instruction examines the role of emotions in academic learning, with a special focus on emotions in computer-supported academic learning (or e-learning). Three central research challenges concerning emotion in e-learning are: identification (e.g., what are the key emotions in e-learning?), measurement (e.g., how can we tell how strongly a learner is experiencing each key emotion during e-learning?), and explanation (e.g., what are the causes and consequences of the learner's emotional state during learning?). A useful goal of research on emotions in e-learning is to test an affective-cognitive model of e-learning with links among an e-learning episode, the learner's emotional reaction during learning, the learner's cognitive processing during learning, and the learning outcome.

A Digital Coach That Provides Affective and Social Learning Support to Low-Literate Learners

In this study, we investigate if a digital coach for low-literate learners that provides cognitive learning support based on scaffolding can be improved by adding affective learning support based on motivational interviewing, and social learning support based on small talk. Several knowledge gaps are identified: motivational interviewing and small talk must be translated to control rules for this coach, a formal model of participant emotional states is needed to allow the coach to parse the learner's emotional state, and various sensors must be used to let the coach detect and act on this state. We use the situated Cognitive Engineering (sCE) method to update an existing foundation of knowledge with emotional models, motivational interviewing, and small talk theory, technology, and a new exercise in the volunteer work domain. We use this foundation to create a design specification for an Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) coach that provides cognitive, affective, and social learning support for this exercise. A prototype is created, and compared to a prototype that only provides cognitive support in a within- and between-subjects experiment. Results show that both prototypes work as expected: learners interact with the coach and complete all exercises. Almost no significant differences are found between the two prototypes, indicating that the affective and social support were not effective as designed. Potential improvements are provided for future work. Results also show significant differences between two subgroups of low-literate participants, and between men and women, reinforcing the importance of using individualized support measures with this demographic.

Towards a pragmatic modeling of learner's complex system by reflecting Boulding's typology at the affective computing space

This work reflects Boulding's Typology (BT) of the learner's complex system at the space of affective computing. From this perspective, the learner's emotional state is interweaved with the structural elements of his/her learning functioning (both internal and external) when placed within an educational setting. The advent of new technological achievements in the accurate acquisition of the learner's affective state allows for the redesign of the ICT-based educational settings, taking into account a bilateral approach of the learner's system that involves both cognitive and emotional processes, as reflected in the Valence/Arousal space. Justification of the crucial role of learner's affective state in the design of an ICT-based educational setting is provided with the implications derived from an experimental case-study, referring to emotional responses to IADS-based sound stimuli presented to three age-dependent learner-groups. The proposed affective parameters define an enriched BT that could serve as a basis for structuring a new model, closer to the pragmatic nature of the learner's system.